


Werewolves 101

by elumish



Series: Werewolves 101 [14]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Bondage, Dom/sub, M/M, Professor Stiles Stilinski, Writer Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-02 20:22:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 59,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5262188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles grins. “Welcome to Werewolves 101. If you’re not supposed to be here…you might not want to be here.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this piece is going to be really long and involve Stiles teaching (aka my werewolf mythos headcanons), political stuff, relationship drama, and other stuff I won't mention so I don't spoil anything.
> 
> Also, the rating is Mature right now, but if you think I should change it to Explicit, let me know.
> 
> (Also, I will finish Nous Vous Protegeons, I promise, chapter three is just not working.)

Stiles watches from his seat in the back of the room as the first student walks in. A freshman, going by the fact that he looks confused as hell, spots Stiles, and then takes a seat in the front row, shoulders hunched, and starts pulling a laptop and what looks from Stiles’s vantage to be a notebook and a couple dozen pens.

The next few people come in together—probably not freshman—and grab spots in the middle of the room, and then it’s like the flood gates open and people start streaming in, mostly freshman and almost all human. It’s a full class—registration said they were just under the hundred cap, and it looks like it—and the acoustics are good enough that the sound is more like a dull roar than an overwhelming one.

He waits until it’s almost time for class to start—one minute till—before hopping up from his seat and heading down the slope of stairs between the left and middle rows so he can take a seat perched on the edge of the front desk. The almost-hundred people stare at him with varying shades of confusion and amusement, and he stares back.

And then he grins. “Welcome to Werewolves 101. If you’re not supposed to be here…you might not want to be here.”

The freshman who was the first one to walk in looks up, alarmed, and then hurries out of the room to the sound of snickers from most of the rest of the class. There’s always the one.

“Anyone else?” Nobody moves. “Cool. Great. So, again, welcome to Werewolves 101.” He drops his backpack on the desk and pulls out the massive stack of syllabi, then hands them off to the person in the front of the room. “Pass those around, make sure everyone gets them. There’ll be one posted online, because you’re 100% going to lose this one, but for right now—and for every class, you’re not allowed to have laptops.” A few people start putting them away, but most of them don’t. “That means put them away. If you need one for whatever reason, you need to talk to me or send me an email, but otherwise you’ll all be on Reddit or Facebook instead of paying attention.”

The rest of them put their laptops away, and he sees the syllabus isn’t done making its rounds, so he says, “While we’re waiting for those to get to everyone, let me tell you a little bit about myself. First, yes, I am old enough to be teaching this class. My name is Stiles Stilinski, and I know that from my email address the first letter of my name is clearly not an ‘s’, but also nobody names their kid ‘Stiles’ if their last name is ‘Stilinski’, so you don’t even need to ask. You can call me Professor Stilinski or Dr. Stilinski or Mr. Stilinski or basically anything that is both not a slur and that there is a reasonable expectation that I could figure out you’re talking to me.

“Now we’re going to do a little exercise. By a show of hands, how many of you are taking this because it fulfills a general education requirement?”

Probably three-quarters of the class puts their hands up, which is pretty much standard.

“How many are taking it because you’re Werewolf Studies majors?”

About a quarter.

“How many are taking it just because you thought it would be interesting, and it doesn’t fulfill any sort of requirement for you?”

Five, which is a little higher than usual, but basically par for the course.

Stiles nods. “Okay, great. Now I’m going to ask you some questions about your experiences with werewolves, and I just want a show of hands. This is mostly so I can gauge your level, but also you all know who you should try to talk into studying with you before tests.” There are a few laughs. “First, how many of you have ever seen a werewolf?”

The whole class puts their hand up, which is good, because there’s a werewolf in the room, and it would be kind of sad if they didn’t. Not that untrained people are all that good at recognizing unchanged werewolves, nor did they really need to be, but still.

“How many of you have held an actual conversation with a werewolf, not counting any conversation you’ve had since you walked in.”

About half the hands drop, and people start looking around for the werewolf in the room; a few of them are peering at him like they think it might be him, even though he doesn’t had a conversation with any of them.

Stiles nods and hops up on the desk so he’s actually sitting on it instead of just leaning against it, because having an edge of wood against his ass is not particularly pleasant. “Next question—how many of you are or know someone who is affiliated with or part of a pack?”

There are about fifteen hands at that question, including the werewolf (which, good, because he really doesn’t want a rogue in his class).

“Last question—how many of you have ever dealt with the HFU?”

Nobody, and thank God for that.

“Okay. Everyone have a syllabus?” Nobody says anything, so the answer is probably yes. Or that they just don’t want to say anything, which totally happens. All the freaking time. It would annoy him more, except he totally remembers being that student (at least in that one astrophysics class he took to fulfill a general education requirement, where he had no idea what was going on for the entire class). “Let’s start.”

\--

Once the class is over and Stiles is sitting cross-legged on the desk packing up the papers he had everyone hand in (name, hometown, one fact about werewolves because he was too lazy to take attendance) when the werewolf walks over and stops in front of him, scuffing his foot on the floor as he puts the paper down next to Stiles.

Stiles smiles at him, making sure to keep his expression gentle because the kid looks like he’s about to bolt. “Can I help you with anything?”

“Do you, uh—from what you said, it seemed like you knew? Know. Did you know?”

About him being a werewolf, Stiles assumes, and nods. “It’s my job to know. Though you know you can place out of this, right? They should have given you an exception, but you can talk to the registrar if you want.”

The werewolf shakes his head. “I’d rather take it, if that’s okay. I’m born, if you can’t—I’m born, but I’m from a bitten pack, so we all missed a lot of the more formal education, history stuff.”

“Makes sense. My best friend is bitten, and he almost failed his Intro to Werewolves class. So I totally support the idea of werewolves learning about themselves.”

The werewolf’s face lights up. “You know a werewolf? I mean, of course you know werewolves, but you’re close to one?”

Stiles nods. “I’m actually part of a pack, the McCall pack up in Beacon Hills. There are two of us down here, both human, and I don’t know if you have any humans in your pack, but if you have any questions about how that works, feel free to ask.”

“Thanks.” He holds out his hand, and Stiles takes it to shake. “I’m Cole, by the way. Monroe-Sanchez pack; we’re over in the Bay Area. And, uh, before, you said something about showing us a transformation, and I was wondering if you were planning on making me—”

“Oh, no. No.” He shakes his head. “First, it would be not just unprofessional but basically illegal for me to out you without your permission, so no. And I bring a couple of people down from my pack, because I know and can trust how they’ll react to a hundred screaming college students.”

Cole smiles. “Probably a good choice. My control is good, but I don’t know if it’s quite that good. So—so you’re in a pack? I know that should probably bother me more, because of territory and stuff, but I really just—sorry if this is too much information, but I’m the only one from my pack here because they’re almost all out of college, and I feel like I’m drowning in this sea of _humans_.” He grimaces. “Sorry, I don’t mean, well, you.”

“I get it, believe me. Almost my entire pack went to college simultaneously, and the six of us went to four different colleges. Well, and then the seventh went to college and he went somewhere else, so I get what it feels like. When I’m bringing the ones from my pack down here, if it’ll make it easier for you, I can put you in contact with them beforehand so none of you have a territorial freak-out when they show up.”

“That might help.”

He starts to go, and Stiles realizes something. “Are you planning on handing in a full moon exemption form? Because those are due fairly soon.”

“No, I’m good.” Cole shrugs, pulling him backpack further up on his shoulder. “We don’t have any humans in our pack, but I dated one for almost two years, and you need pretty good control to make sure you don’t, you know, tear their throat out or whatever. And this is a morning class, so it really shouldn’t be an issue. But thanks.”

Stiles nods and hops off the desk, jamming everything in his backpack. “Come talk to me if you need anything, even just about going to college away from your pack.”

Cole grins at him. “Thanks, Professor Snorlax.” And then he turns and walks out of the room.

It takes Stiles a minute to get, and then he can’t breathe for laughing.

\--

Derek growls at him when he walks in the door, which would be more intimidating if he wasn’t also reaching forward to plant a kiss on his lips and drag his backpack off his shoulder to set it on the floor. “You smell like werewolf.”

Stiles sticks his tongue out at him, shoving his hands up Derek’s shirt because there’s no point in having a muscly boyfriend if he can’t grope him every once in a while. “It’s my student, not someone encroaching on your territory, and we just shook hands.”

Derek reaches in and pulls one of Stiles’s hands out from under his shirt (which, no, stop that) and leans down to suck a finger into his mouth. Around it, he asks, “This hand?”

“The, uh—” He sucks another one in, and Stiles loses what he’s saying for a second. “The other hand. People shake with their right hand.” Derek grins around his fingers, a little sharp-toothed, then lets go to reach down and grab the other hand and drag his teeth across the meat of his thumb, which sends heat through his entire body. “Is this you marking your territory or something?”

There’s the slide of Derek’s tongue down the side of his finger, hot and wet, and then he says, “You smell like people.”

“That, uh, that happens.” Stiles wants to get involved in this touching, too, so he slides his damp left hand across Derek’s hipbone; Derek’s entire body shudders, and yep, he definitely wants to see that again. “You know, when I’m around people. I smell like them. What are you planning on doing, licking my entire body?”

He doesn’t say no, which, yeah, that sounds kind of fucking fantastic. And also like Stiles should get them both in bed as soon as possible so they can get right on that, because the thought of Derek’s tongue dragging up his chest, his throat, his dick—

“But first,” Derek says, pulling Stiles’s hand out with a wet pop, “we should eat.”

Ugh. “Or we could fuck first and then eat.”

“Food.” Derek turns and puts a hand at the small of his back, dragging it up under his shirt with his nails scratching up his skin. While feels amazing (though not as good as Derek’s mouth, damn it), and Stiles starts to feel some of the tension from the day draining away. “I made stir fry.”

“You made stir fry?” Also, is that why the apartment smells like food?

“I do cook.” Derek leans down and sighs, a point of heat on the side of Stiles’s head. “Also I got stuck, and it was cooking or throwing my laptop at the wall.”

“Am I allowed to ask what’s going on in the series now?”

Derek laughs. “Not a chance.”

Stiles pouts. “Aw, come on? I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

“It’s incoherent shit at the moment, so no.” Derek pushes him down into the chair with a, “Stay,” then heads over to grab the pan and set it down on the table, then grabs a couple of plates and utensils and sets them down. “Food.”

“Plate.”

Derek rolls his eyes, dropping down into the chair across from him. “Hilarious.” He spoons some stir fry out of the pan onto one of the plates, then adds some rice from a pot on the table and hands it to Stiles. “Eat.”

Stiles takes it, looking at it. It looks surprisingly not terrible. “Is this another sort of marking-your-territory thing, like the licking and stuff? Feeding me?”

“I couldn’t have just cooked?”

Stiles stabs a piece of asparagus and eats it, and huh, that’s actually really good. “I have seen you cook toast, eggs, steak, and baked potatoes. Not that I’m complaining. I like all of those things I listed. Plus this. I’m going to stop complaining and eat. Thank you.” He digs in, because it really is good, and Derek starts eating too.

Finally, once Stiles is halfway through his plate and Derek is on his second, Derek puts his fork down. “Kind of.”

Stiles blinks at him, then swallows the too-large bite of food. “What?”

“It’s kind of a marking-my-territory thing. Like, we—you should know this. From your pack. Feeding people is a—a thing.”

Stiles did know that, but, “I thought it was a pack thing. I mean, it’s an Isaac thing, because Isaac is super, like, taking-care-of-us-y, though I thought that that was more because of his fucked childhood where he thinks he needs to prove his worth even though we keep trying to convince him that’s not true, and Scott just likes pretending to help with food even though he’s more likely to set stuff on fire than cook it properly, but I—the people in the pack dated other people in the pack, or people who ended up in the pack, and I didn’t really date werewolves.”

Derek shrugs. “Well, it’s a thing. And you were with lots of people, and none of them smell familiar, and I—” He shrugs again. “Anyway.”

“I mean, I’m not going to complain. It’s really good. It was just kind of unexpected. Really not complaining.” He takes another bite of food to prove how much he’s not complaining. “’s good.”

“Good.”

The two of them eat some more, and then something hits him. “So when I made you pie…?” Derek grins. “Good to know. So if I want to get laid, I should just bake you something.”

Derek snorts. “If you want to get laid, all you need to do is ask.”

“I want to get laid.”

“Later.” Derek takes another bite of food. “I’m eating.”

Stiles kicks Derek’s ankle with his foot. “Asshole.”

Derek’s answering smile is sharp.


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles curls up on the couch with his head against Derek’s leg and yawns. Even after all these years, he never really got good at the whole sleep-is-for-the-weak mentality, even if he’s always operated a bit by it. That isn’t to say he doesn’t like sleep, he does, but he just…doesn’t sleep. Much. More when he’s been away for longer, less when the Nogitsune’s in his head.

And really not enough when he’s grading papers.

Which he doesn’t want to keep doing, so he turns his face towards Derek’s thigh and bites down, because even if denim isn’t his favorite taste, chewing on Derek is fun.

And wow, maybe he really is tired, or maybe the pack has worn off on him a little more than he originally thought.

Derek’s hand lands on his head, not stopping him, just resting there. “What’s up?”

Stiles whines in his throat, turning just enough so he can talk. “I don’t _want_ to do work.”

“So you decided to chew on my jeans, instead?”

Stiles tilts his head up so he can see Derek, who looks like he’s completely focused on whatever he’s typing, then grins. “It’d be more fun if you took them off.”

Derek’s lips twitch into almost-a-smile. “So you can chew on my leg, instead? I thought I was supposed to be the canine in this relationship.”

“I can piss on you if you want.”

Derek snorts, sliding his fingers through Stiles’s hair. Which, yes, very good plan, keep doing that. “Not my thing, thanks. I can give you something else to suck on if you want.”

Ooh, fun. “Your dick?”

“I was thinking about more like my fingers.”

Not quite as fun, but close. “But then how will you type?”

His fingers trail down Stiles’s cheek, touch the corner of his lips. Stiles opens his mouth, but Derek doesn’t move them any closer. And Stiles could move his head, get the fingers in his mouth, but that would ruin some of the fun, so he just sticks his tongue out just enough to brush against it; Derek’s skin tastes like salt.

“I’m not typing right now, am I?”

“Doesn’t mean you won’t want to later.”

“Then I’ll just take my fingers back.” He shrugs. “Or won’t, whatever.” And then he slides one finger inside Stiles’s mouth, across his gum line and his teeth. Stiles closes his lips over it, sucking as best as he can with the angle as it is, and the salt taste is so much better inside his mouth. “Another one, now.”

He opens his lips again, and Derek slides another finger in, letting Stiles curl his tongue around them and suck. He moans at the feeling of the fingers in his mouth, and Derek drags a third one against across his cheek. “More,” he tries to say, though it’s garbled around the fingers, and Derek hums.

“You want to take more of me in?”

Stiles half-nods. “P’eashe.”

“What if I want you to do something else with them?”

There are so many things that Derek could do with his fingers, and Stiles would be up for basically all of them. “Mmhmm.”

Derek’s other hand drags through his hair, once, then goes back to whatever it was doing before. “Suck on them. Get them wet. Then maybe we can do something more interesting with them.”

He moans again, because that sounds fantastic, and starts running his tongue over Derek’s fingers, getting them wet, getting them so they’ll be dripping when Derek pulls them out of his mouth, and he doesn’t care that he’s getting Derek’s jeans wet, and some part of him doesn’t care if this doesn’t even go anywhere because he’s doing where Derek asked, and maybe he shouldn’t be okay with that part, but he is.

Derek pulls his fingers out, slowly, sliding them between Stiles’s spit-slippery lips, and he regrets the loss of them almost as much as he anticipates whatever’s coming next. And then, without warning, Derek turns Stiles so he’s on his back, reaching out with the wet hand to slip inside Stiles’s sweatpants and grab his dick. Stiles arches up as heat races through his body, and he’s achingly hard as Derek slides a finger across the slit. “Oh, fuck, please.”

“Please what?”

“Please get me off, please—oh, God, please—please get me off, let me do—let me—I’ll—God—”

It looks through Stiles’s slitted eyes like Derek smirks at him, hand moving just slow enough that Stiles can’t get off. “Sounded a bit unclear, there. Was there something you wanted?”

Stiles’s hips arch up into Derek’s hand as he babbles, “Get me off, please, please get me off, let me come, I want to come.”

“Never said you couldn’t,” he says, and just like that, Stiles comes.

Once he’s ridden through the aftershocks—and Derek licking the cum off of his fingers, because holy fuck, that’s almost enough to make him come again—Stiles crawls over to Derek’s lap, sliding both hands up his shirt. Derek smiles down at him, clean hand sliding through Stiles’s hair.

Stiles looks down at where he’s still hard in his jeans, one button undone, then up at his face. “Can I suck you off?”

As soon as Derek nods, Stiles gets to work.

\--

“So…packs.” Stiles resists the urge to imitate a wacky waving inflatable tube man from where he sits cross-legged on the front desk of the classroom. “Someone not in a pack tell me something about packs. Prove to me you did the reading, or at least have looked up werewolves somewhere other than RedTube.”

Someone near the front raises the hand, and when he points at them, they say, “A pack is a group of werewolves.”

“False. Someone who did the readings?”

A girl puts up her hand near Cole, and Stiles sees the werewolf holding a smile. “It is, though. According to Simons, a pack is a set of werewolves connected through a metaphysical bond, containing at least one alpha.”

Oh, for God’s sake. “Someone who did the readings _carefully_?” There’s no one, presumably as they all try to figure out what they’re missing, and then Cole sticks his hand up. “Against the rules—put your hand down.” Cole puts his hand down, but then nobody raises there hand and the silence is starting to get awkward, so Stiles says, “Okay, fine, you answer.”

Cole nods. “A pack is a set containing at least two werewolves, at least one of whom is the alpha, and an indeterminate number of other people, werewolf or not, connected by a metaphysical bond.”

“Precisely.” Stiles hops off the desk (ow, knees, he feels old) and heads to the board to start writing. “As Simons—and Cole—point out, to be considered a pack, there must be at least two werewolves or else the connection won’t set. For whatever reason, humans can be part or add to packs but they can’t make them form. At least not in a metaphysical sense.

“Now packs delineate themselves by way of their territory, which is why we have the current congressional setup, which we will be talking about during the pack politics day in a month or so.” He turns around to see the girl from before with her hand up. “Yes?”

She purses her lips, then asks, “How can you be a human in a pack? I mean, being not a werewolf?”

“Rather well, if I do say so myself.” They all blink at him, so he elaborates, “I am part of a pack, but I am also human. For a technical answer, once the metaphysical net has been established, it only needs a singular continuous werewolf node to perpetuate itself. We’re not going to go into all of the technical levels of node theory—you can take that in 407, Pack Metaphysics, which is fortunately taught be someone who isn’t me—but I’ll explain what I can.

“A node is any point in the pack net. The easiest and simplest way to envision the net is to see the alpha in the center, with everyone else branching out from there. Unlike regular trees, however, all non-alpha nodes are essentially equidistant from the alpha; no member is more or less connected metaphysically. The only hierarchy is in terms of the heir, who may or may not be appointed, and that is more on the mental level than the metaphysical one. Again, 407, because I’m not much of a theory person.

“Basically, what the Singular Continuous Node Theory says is that, while nets do require at least two werewolves, they don’t need to be the same two werewolves.” He turns back to write what he’s saying on the board again. “If you start with werewolves A and B and add a human あ—I would use Alpha, but that has obvious problems—and a werewolf C, you can lose werewolf A and still have a pack even if A was the alpha. If you gain werewolf D and lose werewolf B, you still have the same pack—the same net—even though you’ve lost all werewolf members of the original pack. The singular aspect is that at any point you only need one member of the previous iteration of the pack to continue the net. If you lose all but one, though—if you lost A and B at the same time—human あ would drop out of the net and werewolf C would become an omega. Does that answer your question?”

The girl—names, he really needs to learn her name—stares at him for a second, then says, “Not really.”

Huh. “Okay, let’s see if I explain this. Basically, humans can connect to the net, but they don’t provide enough metaphysical feedback to sustain it alone with one other werewolf. They also can’t become alpha, because of metaphysical reasons that I don’t think I can explain properly, which means that they also can’t be heir.” Though Derek’s comments about that when they visited Beacon Hills had been interesting, if not totally relevant to the lesson. “My pack, for example, has three werewolves, a kitsune, and a werecoyote, who may or may not be able to sustain the net, we’re not particularly sure. We also have, including me, three humans. Some packs are all werewolves; some have more humans than werewolves.”

Another person raises their hand, and when he points to them, they ask, “How do people join packs? What makes the node actually set?”

Ugh, metaphysics questions. “This is where the alpha needing to be a werewolf comes in; the node sets coming out from them, so they first need to make the decision, and the other person needs to then accept the net for it to take. The one exception to that is when a person is bitten in, because they automatically join the net of the alpha who bit them.”

“Isn’t that still consensual, though?”

Stiles grimaces involuntarily. “It’s supposed to have to be, legally, but in a technical sense, no, a biting can be nonconsensual. Unfortunately.” And that is the last he wants to talk about that for the moment, so he claps his hands and forces a smile. “Anyway, now on to intra-pack relations theory.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most updates won't be this fast, but I already had this chapter written, so I thought I would post it. Depending on how well I can motivate myself to do my homework, the next chapter may or may not be done in the next few days.


	3. Chapter 3

Cole stops by at Stiles’s office hours, while Stiles is busy alternating between solitaire and stalking Isaac’s Instagram—okay, yes, he does like Isaac’s scarves, and he’s so damn proud of him for getting as far as he has, even though he’ll probably never say it aloud—and it takes him almost a minute to notice. Because, hey, werewolves are quiet.

So he almost jumps out of his chair, pressing a hand to his chest. “Jesus. Hi. Sorry.”

Cole shoots him an apologetic grin, dropping down in the couch Stiles keeps in his office for this purpose—and because occasionally he naps before class, or used to before he had an actual reason to be at home, even if he hasn’t technically…officially…moved in…whatever. “Is that the Lahey Designs Instagram?” Stiles nods, and then Cole spots his scarf, and his eyes widen. “Is that a Lahey scarf? Aren’t those like ridiculously expensive? Not that I’m a fashion person, but Isaac Lahey is one of the kind of idols of the werewolf world, him and maybe Laura Hale, and so that’s just…really cool.”

He’s definitely going to need to tell Isaac about this. “It was a Christmas present.”

“From who?”

For a second Stiles had forgotten Cole didn’t actually know who was in his pack. “Isaac.”

“ _Lahey_? You _know_ Isaac Lahey?”

“I’ll see if I can get him to be one of the people to do the transformation for the class.” Cole looks like he’s about to have a heart attack, so Stiles asks, “What can I do for you?”

Cole nods. “Right. Yes. I wanted to talk to you about the big paper. I know it’s early, but if I do what I want to do, it’ll probably take a while, so I thought I’d ask now.”

Wow, and a studious student, too. “Yeah, of course. What were you thinking of doing?”

“I wanted to do something about the Hale pack, maybe as a case study for an investigation of pack cohesion in the face of trauma, or maybe territory shift in the face of trauma. But I wasn’t really sure if that fit the assignment, because your instructions were kind of vague.”

Stiles shrugs though, God, that’s going to be weird reading about the Hale pack now that he knows them and is dating one of them. “They’re vague on purpose, but what you’re talking about sounds like it fits. As long as you incorporate at least one theory from the class, both of those sound fine.”

“Cool.” Cole grins briefly. “Of course, that brings me to the other problem, which is that there’s not that much research on the Hale pack, other than on Laura Hale’s political stuff, which is really interesting but not really what I want to do my research on.”

“Such is the life of a researcher.” But he has an idea, though it could easily stray into dangerous waters. “I do know someone who’s, uh, connected to the Hale pack, and I can ask them if they’re willing to talk to you. But it’s a bit of a touchy subject for them, so I can’t guarantee that they’ll be willing to talk about it, but if you want I can ask.”

Cole nods. “That would be great. That would be—I would really appreciate that. And if you can’t get it, I—all the packs freaked out when the Hales were attacked, and even though I was a little kid then, I grew up with stories of just the horror and the terror after the attack. So whoever they are, I get not wanting to talk about it. Because they just—the knowledge that the HFU could get to them, could get to what everyone thought was one of the strongest packs in the country, it’s absolutely terrifying.”

Stiles isn’t sure if he wants to ask this, but he feels like he has to. “In class, you didn’t raise your hand for having interacted with the HFU, and you don’t need to say if you have, but if you want warnings before class readings or discussions about it, I would be happy to give them to you.”

“No, no, I haven’t. It’s not like that. It’s more just about growing up afraid, and of knowing that that threat is out there. But it’s not like a trigger for me or anything. But then also like the attack on the Pack Alliance, and the fact that the only reason they got out was because a human was there—and this isn’t anything against you, anything against humans, but just the fact that we have this vulnerability, and there’s nothing we can do about it. And even the fact that if we do have humans in our pack, or when we have them, they’re going to be the first ones targeted, and that’s—how do we put humans in that position, how do we put that threat on them just to protect ourselves?”

“The thing about humans,” Stiles says, and he waits until Cole is looking so he knows he’s listening, “is that we choose to be in the pack. We’re not bitten or born in, we don’t need that feedback to stay sane. We are there solely because we chose to be. And so it’s not about obligation or about you putting us in danger. It’s about our love for our pack. So we protect you like you protect us, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Cole stares at him for a moment, then shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. It’s just hard thinking about someone in my pack dying for me or being killed because someone needs to get through them to get to me.” He shrugs again. “Whatever. We’re—they haven’t done that shit in a while, and there’s nothing—I mean, they spend all that time telling us not to be afraid, and I guess—well, the Hales are still around, aren’t they? Some of them, at least. So the HFU can’t win entirely.” He hops to his feet. “I’m going to go.”

Stiles checks the time, then stands as well, grabbing his stuff. “My office hours are done, so I’ll head out with you.”

“Sounds good, Professor Snape.”

Wow, this kind is a smartass sometimes. Stiles likes that. “Are you going to go through all of the names with ‘S’ that you can think of?”

A grin lights up Cole’s face. “Well, at least until the semester is done. You’re—thanks for letting me complain to you, professor.”

“No problem.”

\--

As soon as the door to the outside opens, Cole freezes. “That’s—”

The smell hits Stiles, and fuck. “Wolfsbane. Someone’s burning wolfsbane.” He grabs the scarf fro where it’s hanging around Cole’s neck and wraps it around the kid’s face so he doesn’t start asphyxiating. “Call the public safety emergency number, tell them wolfsbane’s being burned on campus and that all the werewolves need to be evacuated, and let them know an ashbreaker will be on scene. And then get the hell out of here.”

Cole blinks at him. “Professor—”

“Go.” And then Stiles takes off running towards the smell and the smoke, pulling his own scarf over his mouth because smoke inhalation sucks and wolfsbane isn’t super good for humans, either.

And then he sees it—a column of fire in the middle of the quad, with students ringed around it. Not keeping it lit; they all look like they’re freaking out. So he pushes through them to get between them and the fire, shouting, “You need to evacuate. Get off the quad.”

They start dispersing, even as more people start flooding out of buildings, and he turns to look at the fire. It’s an effigy, it looks like, made of straw and cloth and God knows what else, and it’s throwing off smoke that smells like wolfsbane and his nightmares. But worse is the ring of mountain as just wider than the base of the effigy; he shoves his foot at it, and it rebounds so hard he almost falls over. Fuck.

A hand clasps his shoulder, and he spins to see a man in a public safety uniform glaring at him. “You need to get out of here.”

“No can do.” No matter how much he wants to; he can feel himself getting smoke inhalation, and it feels like he’s about to catch fire, it’s so hot. “This is a druid-keyed fire-holding circle. Unless you get it—” His breath catches in his throat, and he starts coughing. “Fuck. Unless you get it broken, you could dump the ocean on that thing and it wouldn’t go out.”

The officer jerks Stiles a few feet away, hand held over his mouth, and demands, “And you can break it?”

The thing about druid-keyed mountain ash is that it can only be broken by the person who laid it or by someone with a lot of willpower and some very specific knowledge. Nine times out of ten, that person is a druid. But Stiles is druid-trained, and they knew they would need this someday, so, “Yes.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Stiles tries to answer, then starts coughing and can’t stop. Finally, gasping, he says, “If I can’t get it open, you’re fucked anyway, so just let me try. I can show you all my credentials later.”

The officer stars at him for a second, then starts coughing. The smoke is getting thicker. “Fine. What do you need?”

Optimally, for there not to be a fire. “Two minutes, some space, and someone to catch me when I fall.”

“Is that”—a cough—“a metaphor?”

Stiles shakes his head, holding his elbow to his mouth because the scarf isn’t filtering enough smoke. “There’s going to be a hell of a rebound and it’s all going to go through me.”

“Fine.” The officer pulls out his radio and says, “The ashbreaker needs a few minutes, so clear the space.”

The officers all around them start backing up, and Stiles hurries back towards the fire, which feels like it’s gotten hotter.

Yeah, this is going to suck.

Ignoring the smoke and the heat and the throbbing in his throat, he closes his eyes, setting his hands against the invisible wall of the ring. It has a little bit of give, though it’s like sparks against his hand, and heat, and that’s going to hurt tomorrow.

But he can’t worry about it now, so he pushes that aside and breathes in again, slower, deeper, and _pushes_.

He’s going to need to bleed for this to work, so he reaches into his pocket with one hand to pull out his pocket knife, which he opens and runs the blade against the base of his thumb. It hurts like a son of a bitch, but he doesn’t need to worry about hutting a vein, so it’s safer.

Stiles smears the blood against the barrier midair, and it crackles and sparks and sinks in, radiating out like cracks in glass; he tracks it with his mind, following his blood, spreading it even further through a thinning connection.

And then he _shoves_ , and the barrier shatters, its energy rebounding back through him and sending him flying off his feet. The ground rushes up, and he lands on his back, hard, all of the air flooding out of his lungs. Finally, gasping and wheezing and he really never envied Scott less, he drags in a breath, opening his eyes to stare at the smoke-filled sky.

\--

“I’m fine.”

The EMT (paramedic?) bandaging his hand glares at him, then reaches up and shoves the oxygen mask back on his face. “Your hands are covered in second degree burns, and it looks like someone took a knife to one of them. And you’re suffering from smoke inhalation. Do you have someone you can call?”

Stiles starts to take the mask off to answer, sees her glare, and stops, nodding instead. Normally he would call Derek to get him, but even he can figure out that seeing Derek when he smells like smoke and wolfsbane is a bad idea, so he’ll call Lydia instead.

Once his hands are done being slathered with gel or whatever the hell it is and then bandaged, he pulls out his phone and, one letter at a time, types out a message to Lydia.

_4:37 PM Stiles Stilinski to Lydia Martin: Can I have a ride to my apartment/ You on campus?_

_4:38 PM Lydia Martin to Stiles Stilinski: I’ll give you a ride. What the fuck is going on on campus? Got alert to evacuate but not on campus._

Stiles sighs into the oxygen mask, because he doesn’t want to explain this to her right now.

_4:38 PM Stiles Stilinski to Lydia Martin: Druid-keyed ash around a wolfsbane effigy. Smoked out the campus. Had to break it._

There’s a long pause, so he texts Derek instead.

_4:42 PM Stiles Stilinski to Derek Hale: Shit went down on campus if you checked the news. I’m fine. Will be at my apartment tonight. Have some stuff to finish. Will see you tomorrow._

_4:43 PM Derek Hale to Stiles Stilinski: want me 2 come over_

_4:44 PM Stiles Stilinski to Derek Hale: You’re so sexy you’ll distract me :P_

_4:45 PM Derek Hale to Stiles Stilinski: <3_

Stiles rubs his bandaged hand over his mouth, trying to ignore the stupid flutters in his stomach, because damn it, he’s not some fourteen-year-old with his first crush.

_4:47 PM Stiles Stilinski to Derek Hale: <3 to you too._

\--

Lydia shoves Stiles into his apartment, closes the door behind her, and says, “Shower. Now. You smell like an HFU chain smoker.”

“Screw you.”

She gives him a sharp smile, crossing her arms across her chest. “Shower, Stiles, or I will just dump water on you. And then we’re feeding you, and then you’re calling Scott, because I am not going to be the one to have that conversation with him.”

Oh, God, right, fuck. Scott. “I don’t want to have that conversation with him, either. And what am I supposed to say? ‘Someone decided it would be funny to smoke out our campus, and I’m afraid it’s the HFU, because otherwise someone else has access to druid-keyed mountain ash and we’re all fucked?’”

She shrugs a shoulder. “That’s a start, though you might also want to include ‘I’m fine, don’t come rushing down here and freaking the fuck out’.”

Yeah, that probably is a good place to start. “You can head home, you know. You don’t need to stay.”

With a snort, she walks over and drops down on his couch, pulling out her phone. “Get in the fucking shower, Stiles, I don’t want to keep smelling wolfsbane.”

Yeah, he doesn’t either, so he heads to the bathroom and starts up his shower. He keeps plastic bags in there because of how many damn times he’s needed to wrap stuff that isn’t allowed to get wet (and Jesus, that really says something about his life, doesn’t it), though it’s a pain in the ass to do it for both hands, but he manages to get it tied off so he can get in the shower and get the smell of smoke and wolfsbane and the things he’s most afraid of off of him.

Because there aren’t that many things that can kill a werewolf, that can kill most of the people he cares most about in his life, and fire and wolfsbane are two of them. And there’s on his body, now, like some fucking metaphor for his life, him being poisonous to those around him, but he can’t think like that now, can’t think like that anymore, because it’s toxic, and he won’t do that to himself.

If there’s something that therapy where he couldn’t talk about the fact that he had stuck a werewolf so full of knives that even it couldn’t survive had taught him, it was that he wouldn’t survive if he spent his entire life thinking about how had he was for his friends. It would eat him alive, and then he wouldn’t have anything left, and everyone who had tried to kill him or them would have won.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter I have finished, so it'll be longer before the next one.


	4. Chapter 4

Stiles considers not going to Derek’s the next day, because his hands look fucking awful (he can’t look at them, because all he can see is Go pieces and gray skin) and his mind keeps telling him he smells like wolfsbane even though there’s no way he still should, but at some point Derek’s going to get worried and show up, and that might not go over well, either.

But there’s something wrong here, something in the back of his head, and it’s—

It’s Queen to G3.

Isaac picks up Scott’s phone when Stiles calls (and hello, please let that not be a post-coitus phone swap), sounding concerned. “What’s going on? Are you okay? Scott said you were okay, but are you—”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m good.” Stiles starts to rub a hand against his mouth (Go pieces and gray skin) and then stops, forcing it down. “I need to know—what is the Nemeton doing?”

“How did you—we were just about to call you about that. Scott was just about to call you about that, once he’s…done with Kira.”

Ah. Mid-coitus, but not with Isaac. Awkward. “Can you tell me, then?”

“A couple hundred fireflies swarmed Scott yesterday, tried to burrow up his nose.” Stiles can almost hear his shrug. “Weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.” And that was saying something, given what they had all been through.

But that right there, that’s what he had been missing. “I’m heading back to Beacon Hills. I’ll be there in a few hours, maybe five. Can you let Scott know?”

“Yeah, sure. What’s going on?”

Stiles sighs. “I think I need to have another meeting with the tree.”

\--

Driving sucks with fucked up hands. He probably should have known that, but wow, it really sucks. Because there’s nowhere he can hold that doesn’t hurt, and his thumb is now reminding him that cutting into it was not necessarily the best idea, and ugh, he just wants to never have to break a druid-keyed mountain ash ring ever again.

And what fucking druid is working with the HFU? Maintaining the balance should never include attempted genocide. Unless they’re just buying it on the black market, which is an absolutely terrifying thought.

He gets to the apartment just after five in the evening, and he knows Isaac will be cooking soon, but eating before dealing with the Nemeton is a bad fucking idea because he’d like to puke up as little as possible.

Scott is in the apartment when he gets there, with Liam perched on the back of the couch like some weird bird man and Isaac sketching something in his weird scarf notebook of his. And then they all look up like the Borg or something as Stiles sinks down in the nearest chair because he needs a minute before facing the tree.

Scott’s eyes narrow as he looks at him. “Want to explain yet why you want to talk to the tree? You never want to talk to the tree.”

Stiles groans, leaning his head back against his seat. “It’s a hunch. The moves were just too weird, and I—I just need to talk to it.”

“Every time you do—”

“I _know_.” His voice is too sharp, and he forces himself to take in a breath and calm himself down before he says something he regrets. “I know. Believe me, this is not my first choice. But if my other choice is fucking around until someone gets hurt and then talking to the tree anyway, I’ll skip the injuries and go straight to the mindfuck.”

“You don’t seem to have skipped the injuries.”

“Shut up, Bruce Banner, no one asked you.” Stiles looks back at Scott. “I want to head out as soon as possible, because I don’t want to be out there when it’s dark.”

Scott nods. “Isaac and I can head out with you. Fifteen minutes?”

“Fine.”

“Great. So, what the hell happened to your hands?”

\--

It only takes about five minutes to find the Nemeton, which is genuinely one of the scariest non-violent things Stiles has ever experienced, because it means the Nemeton wants him to find it. Which means that either the Nemeton is screwing with him—always a possibility—or something is genuinely wrong.

Scott and Isaac take up their positions far enough away to be safe as Stiles approaches the stupid fucking magic stump of chaos inhabiting their town; he stops a few feet away, holding his hand out like always so a firefly can come to him. And then he waits.

And waits.

And nothing happens; there’s no firefly, no spark, no fucking reaction from the fucking tree, and why the _fuck_ did it let them find it if it wasn’t going to give him anything to work from. So he takes a step closer, ignoring Scott freaking out behind him, and still nothing, so he takes another step, and another, until he’s standing right in front of it, and it _doesn’t do anything_.

And he just…snaps.

“Tell me something useful, you goddamn tree.” And then he swings his foot back and then kicks out and connects, and—

A figure sits on the stump in front of him, a Go board laid out in front of him, and his hands are steady. When Stiles thinks about him, when he has to, he thinks of him as stiles—too washed out to warrant a capital letter. But otherwise he’s the same, same hairstyle, same face, same—

“Your hands aren’t injured.”

stiles shrugs, picking up a black piece and twisting it between his fingers. “You shouldn’t be hurt.”

“Why did you—why did you freak out on Scott? What were you trying to tell me before?”

stiles places the piece on the board. “The territory is in danger. My territory.”

That doesn’t make any sense. “But Beacon Hills—the territory is fine. There hasn’t been anything. And you reacted when _I_ was hurt.”

Another piece is placed, and Stiles looks down at it, and it’s—

“I’m not your territory.” Black just took a white territory, just one piece, and Stiles doesn’t remember laying any white, but the board was empty when he appeared. stiles shrugs. “I’m _not_. If anything, you’re our—I’m not your territory. People aren’t territory. That’s not how it works.”

“You’re in danger, and it’s my alpha’s responsibility to keep you safe.”

For God’s sake. “He’s not _your_ alpha. You’re a tree. A magic, sentient, terrifying tree, but a tree. You can’t be part of a pack.”

“He is the alpha I own. He is my alpha.”

“You can’t _own_ people.”

stiles looks almost irritated, impatience flickering across his face. “Let’s put it this way—you think of the pack as a net, with each individual as a point and the alpha in the middle, yes?”

“How do you—yes.”

“So think of me as above the alpha, only in this net you should be alpha, so I am above you.” He shrugs again. “Queen to G3.”

If what stiles is saying is true, that’s absolutely terrifying. “So you’re saying I’m the Queen?”

“Don’t be slow. My alpha is the Queen.”

“So who am I?”

stiles bares his teeth in something close to a grin, if a grin were a warning that he was about to consume something, and in the back of his head Stiles can hear the Nogitsune saying, ‘I am a thousand years old.’ And then his stomach rebels and he heaves, throwing up everything in his stomach. When he looks up, stiles is gone, and so is the board.

“Stiles?”

Stiles spits out a blob of bile, then turns to look at Scott. “‘m good. I want to wash my mouth out, but I’m good. It’s, uh—I was wrong.” He looks back at the tree, but it’s back to being just a tree. stiles is still gone. And wow, he’s going to be having nightmares about that for months. “The warning, it wasn’t about the terri—” _The black Go pieces surrounding the white._ “It wasn’t about Beacon Hills. The warning was about me.”

“What was it warning about?”

Stiles starts to scrub his hands against his face, but there are bandages, and he doesn’t know of it’s him, he doesn’t know if they’re his hands, except stiles’s hands were unbandaged, they were unbandaged, and he forces them down to his side. “Given that someone tried to smoke out the campus with wolfsbane, I’m guessing it has something to do with that.” He rubs his arm against his eyes. “Fuck. It’s probably the HFU. Fuck.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Who else has access to druid-keyed mountain ash?” The pack of his neck prickles, and he half-turns so the Nemeton is firmly in his line of sight. “And can we have this conversation somewhere else? The tree’s freaking me the fuck out.”

He starts walking (and the fact that he can stay on his own two feet is kind of amazing), and Scott and Isaac join him, Scott in front, Isaac behind. Finally, Scott asks, “What did you talk about? What did it say, beyond that you were in danger?”

Oh, Stiles so doesn’t want to talk about that. “It was some weird metaphysical shit, pack structures and shit.”

“Why does the tree care about pack structures?”

“it’s—I don’t know, it’s a tree. But apparently it wants to keep me alive, though hell if I know why—”

_Because if you die, I lose._

Stiles stops dead in his tracks, arm pressed up to his mouth to keep from throwing up again as his body fights back against the voice in his head. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, he’s hearing it when he’s not connected, oh fuck. He needs to stop opening himself up to it, because one day he’s going to connect and he won’t be able to disconnect, and oh fuck.

Scott looms in front of him, looking both very close and very far away. “Stiles? You okay?”

No. Not at all. But Stiles forces himself to nod. “Yeah. Just thought of something. So I just need like an hour or so, and then I need to head back, because I have a class tomorrow.” After which he’ll head to Derek’s, because there’s no way in hell he’s going to Derek’s tonight, not with the tree in his head. Because at this point if he never sleeps again, it will be too soon.

Scott sighs like he knows what Stiles is thinking, but then he grins. “You’re just saying that because you want to eat Isaac’s food but not have to do the dishes.”

It’s an out, and an obvious one, but Stiles is too much of a coward not to take it. “You caught me. Oh yeah, Isaac, speaking of…you, there’s a werewolf in my 101 class, and he’s a huge fan of yours. Apparently you’re like a werewolf Michael Jackson or something.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Isaac flush then duck his head down so his hair covers his face. Scott beams at him. “Yeah, because Isaac is awesome.”

The flush deepens, and oh, Scott. Because Scott just doesn’t see what he does to Isaac—or Allison—not really, and so he just goes around saying shit like that and not taking into account that Isaac, at least, would voluntarily throw himself into a volcano for Scott if he asked. Allison wouldn’t, but if Scott got rid of Kira, she would take him back, no doubt. They both would.

And that right there is why dating inside the pack is a bad idea. Because once you break up, you still have to live with the person, have a literal metaphysical connection to them. And that’s even truer in the case of Isaac, who stares in a spare bedroom in Scott’s apartment while he’s in the States, in what is possibly the worst housing decision anyone has ever made, and that includes making Kira and Allison room together on that one trip years ago.

And it’s not Scott’s fault, not really; he has the right to date or not whomever he wants, and Isaac living with him makes sense from a pack point of view because Scott’s the alpha and that’s what the alpha does. But Scott has so little comprehension of how interpersonal relationships should work, sometimes, that it’s like watching a really long car crash in really slow motion, and every time you think it’s almost over, another car shows up from around the corner.

Yeah, Stiles has had too much time to think about that metaphor.

But the worst part about it is that Isaac and Allison can’t just hook up on their own, apart from Scott, because for some weird fucked up reason, they only work when Scott is there. Worse, really, any pair doesn’t work as well as the three, so it needs to be all three of them, and with Scott with Kira, that just can’t happen.

“Anyway,” he says, and starts walking, because the silence is getting uncomfortable now, “he was really impressed that I know you, so I told him that I would see if you could be one of the people who turns for my class to show them what it looks like.”

Isaac shrugs, the blush finally starting to recede. “I basically always am.”

That is true, because bringing Scott has its own problems, and he only tried bringing Liam once before realizing that that was a supremely bad idea. So, huh, since he started bringing people from the pack instead of using on campus people, it’s always been Isaac. “Still thought I would ask.”

“Yeah, just give me a date and I’ll make sure I’m in the country.”

“Thanks. When are you heading back to France, anyway?”

“I have a trip in a week or so to talk to a buyer, and probably another couple trips out there this year, and then Tokyo fashion week isn’t until March, but they want me over there in probably December because some pop star wants an original scarf or something.” He shrugs again, looking faintly baffled. Which, honestly, Stiles agrees with. Who the hell flies someone out to Tokyo for a scarf? Who wants original scarves? But whatever. If people want to pay Isaac and fly him around so he can design them scarves, power to them.

Scott frowns at him as they reach the tree line. “You didn’t tell me you were going to Japan.”

Isaac pulls his scarf a little higher up across his face. “Sorry. Just happened. Was going to tell you.”

Isaac looks like he’s on the edge of not quite holding himself together, because the tree puts all of them on edge and he doesn’t hold himself together as well as some of the rest of them—not his fault, they all have their demons—so Stiles reaches out and touches his wrist, just to give him some comfort. Isaac stiffens, then twists his hand to grab Stiles’s wrist, hard, and hold it.

Stiles hears, in the barest edge of his hearing, “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray for the train ride, which is the only reason I finished this chapter so fast.


	5. Chapter 5

Derek doesn’t respond when Stiles knocks on his door, but it’s open, which means he’s probably writing with headphones in. Which on one hand is good because he won’t see the mess that is Stiles’s hands immediately, but on the other hand kind of sucks because Stiles needs to go explain it to him. Which he’s not looking forward to.

He’s not actually sure how bad they look at the moment, because he’s been avoiding unwrapping them, and he’s taken enough pain medication that they don’t actually hurt that much, but second degree burns are kind of disgusting. So he tucks his hands behind his back and heads to Derek’s office, where he’s hunched over his laptop, headphones on.

Stiles walks over and leans down to kiss the back of Derek’s neck, because if he touches Derek with his bandage-y hands Derek will notice immediately; Derek stiffens momentarily, then slumps back in the chair, pulling his headphones off. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Derek turns to look at him, tilting his head up to give Stiles a kiss. “You went up to Beacon Hills.”

Of course he could smell that. “Yeah, I had a couple of things I needed to check on in person. No big deal.”

Derek blinks at him, pulling back slightly. “That was a lie.” It’s not accusatory, just confused.

Ugh. Though this is a perfect time to show him his hands, so he pulls them out from behind his back to show the bandages wrapped around both of his hands. “Before you freak out, I’m fine. My hands are a little screwed up, but I’m fine.”

Derek stands, holding Stiles’s hands loosely in his own, then asks, “Can I—I need to see. That you’re okay.”

“It might look worse than it is.”

“Please.”

God, he can’t deny Derek anything, so he nods, and Derek lets go of his left hand to start unwrapping the right, gently, fingers careful, and Stiles can’t watch, because bandages coming off of burns is one of his bigger triggers, and even though he’s fine now, he might now—

“What the hell happened?”

The bandages are off now, and Stiles can never resist, so he looks, and, “What the fuck?” The burns are almost entirely gone, leaving just the line he had cut himself, pink but not bleeding. How the fuck was—the tree. Shit. _Shit._

“Stiles?”

“I need to—” Derek is too close, and Stiles is suffocating, so he takes a step back and starts pulling at the bandages on his other hand, because he needs to see, even if he doesn’t want to, even if he doesn’t want to know that the tree can do things to more than just his mind. “I need to get it off. I need it off.”

“Stiles.” Derek’s hands settle over his frantic ones. “Let me help.” Stiles keeps pulling for a second, then stops, pulling his hand away so Derek can unwrap the other set of bandages and pull them off. And, fuck, the burns are basically healed, and his hands are—

Lunging around Derek, Stiles picks up the closest pen from the desk, clicking it out and writing 己, 己, he needs to know, he doesn’t, what if they’re not his hands, what if they’re stiles’s hands, what if stiles is out and here and he is stiles, and he has to get away, he can’t infect Derek with this, can’t subject Derek to the mess that is this tree and his life and—

“Breathe.” Derek pushes Stiles down into the chair, shoving his head down between his legs, and Stiles goes, because he has no choice, because he can’t breathe. “Whatever it is, we can figure it out. But you need to breathe.”

“It’s not okay.” He shoves his hands under his knees, out of sight, because they’re _not his hands_. “I can’t—they’re—it’s not okay. I’m _not its territory_.”

Derek crouches down in front of him, hands on Stiles’s knees, and he’s shaking, Stiles is shaking, because this is all wrong. “Do you want me to help?”

He wants to say yes, but the thought is panic and territory and he can’t be someone else’s territory, so he shakes his head, pressing his lips together to keep from saying something stupid. “I can’t—if you tell me what to do, I’m going to hurt you.” It’s a warning, because he doesn’t know how he’ll react, and he really doesn’t want to lash out at Derek.

“Okay.” Derek reaches out and touches his cheek, and that’s okay. It’s okay. The Nemeton doesn’t touch him. It’s okay.

Derek doesn’t say anything else, and something itches in the back of his head. “Are you mad at me?”

“For what?”

He tries to swallow, but it clicks in his throat. “For not telling you when I got hurt.”

Derek sighs, leaning his head against Stiles’s knee for a second. “I’m not happy about it, but I do have bigger concerns at the moment. I can yell at you later.”

Stiles takes in another breath, and this one goes down easier. “Yay.”

Derek snorts. “Would you rather I yell at you now, while you’re almost hyperventilating?”

That sounds like a good way to have a panic attack. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. Want to go cuddle somewhere more comfortable than my office?”

“Or we could have office sex.” So he can have something to distract him from the fact that his hands might not be his hands. “You could let me suck you off.”

“Is that the only thing you think about?” Though the hand on Stiles’s cheek is migrating towards his mouth, and a second later his thumb slips in, sliding against his tongue. “You’re calmer now. Did whatever freaked you out go away?”

That’s funny. It’s never going away. Around Derek’s thumb, he says, “You help,” and Derek’s face lights up.

“Good answer.” He grins. “So, what were you saying about office sex?”

\--

A few hours later, over a few cartons of Chinese food, Derek gives Stiles a look. A Look, with a capital L, the ‘you should have known better’ look combined with the ‘what the hell were you thinking’ look. It’s one he’s used to getting.

“Did you stop to think that running towards a fire was a really fucking stupid idea?”

Stiles stabs his chopsticks into the carton of noodles, then immediately takes them out and starts fidgeting with them because he needs something to do with his hands. “Not really. They were smoking the campus out with wolfsbane. I had to keep the students safe. And besides, who else was going to be able to break the circle?”

The Look deepens into a scowl. “They have druids on call. Someone with the training to protect _themselves_ could have done it, and the campus would have been just fine.”

Stiles scrubs a hand (healed, why is it healed?) through his hair. “Not in time. We have at least sixty werewolves on our campus, maybe more, and what if they couldn’t evacuate in time? I wasn’t going to let the students—my students—asphyxiate because some asshole decided to light up our campus.”

Derek’s hands flex, and fuck, his claws are out. “What if it was the HFU?” Stiles freezes for just a second long before managing to school his face into something like composure, and Derek must notice, because he leans forward, setting his own carton down on the table. “Stiles?”

Shit. “Chances are, it _was_ the HFU, or at the very least another hate group. Getting access to druid-keyed mountain ash isn’t easy, and the only—”

“ _Damn it,_ Stiles. What the _fuck_ were you thinking? They could have had a gunman watching you, a sniper, they could have been waiting to take out the ashbreaker, and you just ran in there? The _fuck_ , Stiles?”

“I was thinking I didn’t want my students to die. What’s so fucking wrong with that?”

“What’s so wrong with that is that I’m not willing to give you up.” Derek’s on his feet, suddenly, looming over Stiles, plucking the container from his hand and setting it down so had it crumples in on itself. “I love you; you’re not allowed to just throw yourself away for some fucking superhero complex.”

Stiles’s heart lurches in his chest, misses a beat, and he feels like it’s going to beat its way out of his ribcage, and he lunges up to latch on to Derek, wrapping his arms around him and burying his head against Derek’s shoulder. He can’t say he won’t do it again, because he will, he always will, he’s the person who pokes at bruises and throws himself in front of danger so other people don’t have to, for better or for worse, and he doesn’t know if he can say that he loves him back, either.

It’s not that he doesn’t, maybe, he doesn’t know, but that he’s not good at loving people, because he gets attached too soon and holds on too hard, and he’d throw himself in front of a bullet for someone but doesn’t always know how to live for them, outside of his pack and his father. And Derek is—sometimes he can’t deal with him, when Derek is holding on too tight and Stiles feels like he can’t breathe. And that’s not always healthy, two people clenching their fists because they don’t know how to hold hands gently.

So it’s not that he doesn’t love him, exactly. It’s that the words are complicated and the feelings are messy and sometimes he can’t remember how to breathe.

So he just wraps his arms around Derek and buries his nose in his throat and tries to breathe through what might be tears and what might be fear and what might be painful, terrifying love.

\--

“So.” Stiles drums his fingers on the desk he’s sitting cross-legged on, staring up at his class. There are maybe fifty of them there, which is pretty normal for a not-review and not-test day, but it’s okay because he posts lectures online and if they don’t want to be there he isn’t sure he wants them to be. “Two weeks from now we’re going to have a couple of members of my pack come down here and show you a transformation. Before that happens, though, I have a few ground rules to go over with you, and I thought I’d give this spiel to you the first time this way, so that you hear it before you forget and then read the email I send you in a week.

“Basic overview—it’s going to be scary if you haven’t seen it before. Glowing eyes, sharp teeth, weird eyebrows, all that jazz. It’s honestly really disconcerting if you don’t know what’s coming. Here are some things you don’t want to do: scream, run, try to attack them, throw things, throw up. The last one is mostly because throwing up is gross, and also I really don’t want to clean up vomit, so please just…don’t. And the thing is that the people who are coming are good at handling stressful situations, which means that they’re not going to lose control if you freak out. That being said, you will learn more and it will be overall much more pleasant if everybody stays calm.

“Werewolves can talk while transformed, because nobody will be taking on full wolf form. As we’ll be discussing today, it is illegal to take on full wolf form in, among other places, schools. Additionally, as we discussed before, not all werewolves are capable of taking on that form; only about seven percent of werewolves are able to, and only about three percent of bitten wolves are able to.

“Does anyone who spends a lot of times with werewolves have anything else to add?”

Cole sticks his hand up, and when Stiles nods to him, he says, “If they let you approach while they’re turned, don’t touch them without their permission. I mean, that’s a kind of generally good rule, but it’s especially important for turned werewolves, because physical sensitivity is a lot higher at that point. And screaming—if you could avoid anything, I would avoid screaming, because werewolf hearing is a lot more sensitive than human hearing, especially when turned.”

Very good points, and things he probably would have thought of eventually, but it’s good for them to hear it. “Thank you. If anyone has anything else, send me an email, and I’ll include it in my reminder email that I send it out. But for right now, we’re going to move on to public policy related to werewolves.”

From somewhere in the room, he thinks he hears a groan, and yeah, he knows that feeling. He’s done a lot of research on this topic, but sometimes it makes him feel like putting his head through a wall. Because werewolf rights have improved a lot, but some rules are based on the assumption that werewolves are mindless beasts, and that’s so ridiculously speciesist it doesn’t even make sense. Like, had the people who made the rules ever met a werewolf? Especially a werewolf who wasn’t full-moon transformed?

But there’s not much he can do about it, not unless he goes into policy, and he really doesn’t want to go into policy, so he just teaches and hopes one of them can maybe fix it in the future.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is awful, but I needed it to happen to get to the next couple of chapters, so...yeah. Chapter. Bear with me, and then we will have chapters with more actual plot-y things and drama-y things and not-terrible writing.
> 
> Also, happy (belated) Thanksgiving to all of my American readers, and happy Friday-ish to all of my non-American readers (and I guess my American ones, too).


	6. Chapter 6

When the phone rings, Derek visibly considers letting it ring through. But it’s Laura’s ringtone—and it’s a bit disconcerting that he knows this—and Derek always picks up. So he slips Stiles’s hands out of the ropes—and Stiles tries to hold in his whimper, because fuck, he doesn’t want to come down from this high—and starts massaging Stiles’s wrists with one hand while reaching over and picking up with the other one.

“Yeah?” He listens for a second, then goes still, hand freezing on Stiles’s. “You sure?”

Stiles props himself up on one elbow. “What’s going on?”

Derek puts the phone on speaker, then sits it down between them and goes back to rubbing Stiles’s wrists. Which, while not what he was hoping for, is still a nice way to have his hands. “You’re on.”

Laura’s voice comes through. “Sorry to interrupt whatever the two of you are doing—and no, I really don’t want to know—but you need to turn on your television. Now.”

Derek shoots to his feet, holding the phone in one hand while holding Stiles up with the other. He’s not really mentally up for moving right now, the blood rushing from his head and leaving him swaying into Derek, but Laura wouldn’t do this unless it was important. He thinks.

They make it to the couch without him falling over, though his legs feel like mush and his head is still half back in the bed, and he collapses down on the pillows and flops down against Derek. He needs the touch, especially because it’s cold with just his boxers on, his erection flagging.

“What channel?”

Derek puts the phone down on the table just as Laura says, “CNN. They’ll be talking about it for…a while.”

That’s bad. That’s like terrorism-level bad, from her tone, though from just the CNN part it could be about literally anything. But Derek turns the TV on and flips to CNN, and Stiles stares at it sideways, and oh fuck.

“—reporting to you live from outside the Kansas City Pack Alliance building, where Alpha Deucalion just made an announcement regarding his support of the Congressional Voting Reform Bill. This marks the first public split within the Alpha Council, the eight-member voting congregation of werewolves to the House of Representatives, which comes just hours after Alpha Hale’s announcement of her opposition to the bill.”

The reporter keeps talking, but Derek talks over him. “Deucalion opposed you? Publicly? He openly split the Alliance?” He sounds furious. Stiles doesn’t know if he’s ever heard him sound so angry.

“Deucalion was nuts before the HFU got to him, and that didn’t make anything better.”

“I still didn’t think he was crazy enough to do this. The strength of our vote is based on us standing together. If we oppose each other, it looks like there’s dissent and like we’re unstable.”

Chills start running across Stiles’s skin, and he curls up even tighter against Derek, only half listening as Laura’s response. Because Derek will tell him later, and honestly, he doesn’t really care, not right now. Not when half his brain is still back in the bed and none of it is in this conversation right here.

Because why does everything always have to turn into this, all of their plans and all of their time together being interrupted by all of the shit going on. And isn’t that supposed to have stopped happening once he left Beacon Hills and left all that shit behind? But every time Laura gets involved, Derek just drops whatever he’s doing, which is usually Stiles, and runs to go help her. Even though she’s not anywhere nearby, even though she’s not even in the state, and she should be able to talk care of herself. She’s a goddamn Alpha, after all.

And it’s not that he thinks that Derek doesn’t care about him, because he knows that he cares about him, but he wants to be the first person, the main person, for someone, because he hasn’t been that, not since Scott met Allison, and with the pack, everyone belongs to everyone and they all belong to Scott, and he just wants to be the person for someone. And he’s not, not for Derek, not for the pack, not for anyone. Because if he drops everything for Laura, then he drops Stiles for her, too.

“—need to go.”

Stiles looks up at Derek and wants to ask where they’re going, but then Laura says, “Call me back soon,” and Stiles thinks maybe they’re not going anywhere. Which is good for him, because he’s not sure if he can get up any time soon. And when Derek leans forward, Stiles just clings on to him, because otherwise he’ll slide off onto the ground, which would hurt.

And then Derek’s hand slides through his hair, gripping slightly, and something tightens in his back like he wants to relax but isn’t sure if he can. “I’m sorry, I’ve been neglecting you.”

He doesn’t want to say he agrees, and really he doesn’t want to say anything, so he just tugs back just enough for the grip to pull. Because he likes the feeling, the reminder that Derek is holding on.

“I think you’re dropping in a bad way, and I need to stop that from happening. Do you trust me?”

He does, so he nods.

“I’m not going to tie you back up right now, because I don’t think us getting up is a good idea, but I think you need to feel me against your skin, so I’m going to hold you down. Color?” He has a word to say, but he can’t bring himself to open his mouth and say it, and it’s silent. “You don’t want to talk? Okay. That’s okay.” Derek slips his hand into Stiles’s loose one and says, “If it’s okay, squeeze once. If it’s not—if it’s red—squeeze three times. Twice will be yellow, that you want a break or to say something. Is that okay?”

He squeezes once, because it’s okay, and because he does want to feel Derek against his skin more, and then Derek flips him so his back is on the couch, Derek’s hands pinning his over his head, Derek’s entire body bracketing him. But that tension is still there, at the base of his spine, like the stress just won’t go away.

Slowly, Derek lowers himself down on Stiles so they’re touching skin-to-skin, Stiles’s face buried against Derek’s throat so he can feel his pulse against his lips.

And it’s—settling, somehow, because Derek is here with him, Derek stopped talking to Laura to pay attention to him, Derek is _here_ , holding him down, keeping him safe, with his back to the couch and his front covered. And he doesn’t have to move, doesn’t have to go anywhere, though Laura called, so they’re going to have to do something, and he doesn’t want to have to do anything except just be with Derek, and—

“You want to tell me what’s wrong?”

He doesn’t, he can’t, he doesn’t want to open his mouth and shape words because it’s so much—it’s too—he squeezes Derek’s hand twice where it’s tangled with Stiles’s.

“Okay. We can talk about it later.”

Stiles nods against Derek’s throat, and huh, he’s shaking, he didn’t realize that, but his muscles are trembling under Derek, and he just feels…wrong, somehow, out of sorts, like his fear and frustration has moved into his muscles, all of the chemicals wrong in his brain, and he knows what that feels like, knows what that’s like, and it’s stupid, because it’s not panicking, he’s not freaking out, he’s just…off.

“Do you want to be on top of me?”

That would be—that would be vulnerable, and he can’t do vulnerable right now, can’t have his back exposed, so he shakes his head. “Can you give me a hug?”

Derek breathes out then lets go of Stiles’s hands to wrap his arms under him in a tight hug, his entire body on top of Stiles’s. “I don’t think you know how good you look, tied to my bed, half-blind with pleasure, looking like I could do whatever I want to you, like you would let me take care of you forever. You’re so fucking beautiful that way, so warm and trusting and so good for me.” Stiles buries deeper against Derek, pressing his head against his chest, and his voice gets hard to understand, reverberating through his ribcage, but Stiles knows he’s saying good things, and right now he doesn’t really want to think.

\--

When Stiles wakes up, he’s alone, but it’s okay, because he can hear Derek cooking in the kitchen, and he feels okay now, centered, the tension gone from the bottom of his spine. Stretching, he climbs to his feet and pads into the kitchen to wrap his arms around Derek from behind and lean his head against Derek’s neck. “Hey.”

“Hi. Sleep well?”

Stiles kisses the back of his neck. “Yeah. Sorry for being weird earlier.”

Derek shrugs, still doing…whatever he’s doing on the stove, and Stiles could look, but he’s lazy. “No problem. You had a big drop because we had to stop suddenly; it’s not your fault.”

Right. “So what did Laura say? I basically wasn’t listening.”

Derek snorts, reaching over to turn the heat off. “Of course you weren’t. Food’s ready. Let’s eat.”

“I could have helped you cook.”

“You were sleeping.” Then he picks up the pan from the oven and carries it over to the desk, Stiles stepping back to give him space so he doesn’t get hit by a hot pan. Because burns are ow. As he’s learned. “Come on. I have meat and…something.”

“Do you not know what you put in your food?”

Derek scowls at him from where he’s standing behind his chair, tapping his fingers on the back of it. “It’s asparagus and salt and pepper and stuff. Come sit. We should talk.”

Ugh. Talking. Though he knows that they need to, because Laura. The thought doesn’t even need another verb. Just Laura. So he drops down in his seat, spooning some of the stuff from the pan onto his plan and then handing the spoon to Derek. “Right. Thanks for the food. What’s up with Laura?”

There’s a second as Derek shoves his food across his plate, and then he drops his fork down against the side and says, “Laura needs me in New York.”

Fuck. “I can’t—”

“I know. She just wants pack.”

“When are you heading out?”

Derek shoves at his food again. “I have a plane out tomorrow at two. I should be gone for a few days, at most a week.”

Shit. He has class then. “I’m not sure I can—”

“I know.” Derek sighs. “Sorry, I’m just—I don’t want to leave you here alone, not with the shit that’s going on on your campus, but Laura needs us.”

Stiles swallows the bite he just took (and huh, the food is pretty good) then asks, “What does she need you for? This seems like a political issue, and you’re very much not politically visible. No offense, but you’re basically anonymous.”

“And that’s on purpose, and we hope to keep it that way. The problem is that this is making our pack visible in a way it hasn’t been since the fire, and that’s dangerous. I’m going down so we can figure out how to keep us from having targets on our backs.”

This really is such a shit show, and all he wanted was to have a nice stable relationship in a nice stable place with no fucking attacks or violence or hunters, and it’s not Derek’s fault that people are attacking the campus or even that he’s fucked up, but they’re both true, and goddamn it.

But he’s not going to take that out on Derek, so he forces himself to take in a deep breath and then let it out slowly before speaking. “Okay, sounds good. I hope it goes well, and…tell Laura I say hi. If she likes me. If she doesn’t, don’t tell her.” Derek rolls his eyes, and Stiles scowls back at him. “I’m serious. Your sister is terrifying.”

“Hardly.”

“Have you _seen_ your sister? She’s like the president but with fangs and a shit ton of people who would do what she asked.”

“Technically she’s only the alpha of two other people.”

Right. “You mean to tell me that, if she asked anyone in the Pack Alliance to help her, they wouldn’t?”

Derek’s expression shuts down. “Apparently not anymore.” Shit, right. “She does like you. She’s just protective.”

Which is understandable, if seriously intimidating. “I get that. Anyway, I—I hope you can figure it out, and text me when you get there, if you get a chance.”

“Yeah.” And Derek still looks so unhappy that Stiles reaches out and kicks his ankle. “Hey.”

“Stop pouting. I’m going to be fine.” Probably. Hopefully.

Derek shakes his head. “I don’t like leaving you alone here when people are trying to burn your campus. What if they go after you next?”

“They’re not going to go after me next, and they’re not trying to burn the campus.” Technically. “And besides, Lydia’s here, too, and she can kick anyone’s ass. I’ll be _fine_.”

Derek stares at him for a second, then sighs and picks up his fork again. “I know. I just don’t like leaving people I love behind, because they have a habit of not being alive when I get back.” And then he starts eating, methodically jamming food into his mouth, and Stiles doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.

\--

After class the next day, Stiles sits in his car in the parking lot and dials Scott’s number, hoping this time Scott actually picks up. Because normally Isaac is a fairly adequate substitute over the phone when it comes to pack matters, but he actually needs to have a conversation with Scott this time.

“Hello?”

And it’s Kira. Of course. Because Scott can’t bring himself to pick up his phone. Though isn’t he supposed to be at work, and presumably Kira shouldn’t be there with him because she should be at her own work? “Hi. Any chance I can speak to our wise and illustrious leader?”

She laughs. “Yeah, one sec.”

Stiles waits as there’s a rustling sound and then some muffled talking, and then Scott says, “Hey, what’s up?”

“Why aren’t you saving puppies or whatever it is you do?”

“I am. Kira just stopped by. What do you need? Did something else happen on your campus?”

Stiles looks around, but hey, there’s nothing on fire. “No, all good here. But that I was kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. I know there are…reasons not to do this, but is there any chance you would be available to come down with Isaac to do the presentation to my class? I don’t have confirmation yet that it’ll be okay”—and he isn’t positive yet how he’s going to get that—“but if the HFU is involved, I don’t want just Isaac to come down. And honestly, I think all of us would feel secure if there was an alpha around.”

There’s a pause, presumably as Scott thinks things through, and then Scott says, “If it’s okay with the people on your campus, I’ll check with Deaton.”

“Thanks.” Stiles really doesn’t want to ask this next part, but he has to. “What’s the territory been like since I left?”

Scott hums quietly. “It feels like it’s waiting. Like when a big storm is coming and the forest is silent, that’s what it feels like.”

That’s probably not good. “And the tree? Any more glowing swarms?”

“Nothing.” Which is something, at least. “I would go check, but, well, I’d rather avoid an aneurism.”

“Yeah, no, don’t get anywhere near that thing. And just call me if something happens, will you? I’d like some advanced warning before someone bombs my campus or whatever they’re planning next.”

“Do you really think it’ll come to that?”

There’s campus police all over, and he’s seen at least one werewolf walking around with a face mask on in the past few days. “I don’t know. I hope not, but I really—I don’t know.” And he’s scared. He wasn’t supposed to be scared anymore, wasn’t supposed to have to deal with this shit, and he _hates it_. “I’ll call you in a couple days with more information about you coming down here.”

“Yeah. Be _safe_ , Stiles. We’re all going to be pissed if you get yourself hurt again.”

Stiles snorts out what’s almost a laugh. “Yeah, I think you’ll have to get in line. Bye.”

“Bye.”

And then the phone clicks off, and Stiles pulls it away from his ear to stare at it. This is not how it was supposed to work, growing up. He was supposed to be safe. Though, well, he wasn’t supposed to grow up friends with werewolves, either, so nothing really went as planned.

\--

Two hours later, he gets a call from Allison. “They’re not going down there alone. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”

Yeah, things never go as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try to finish Nous Vous Protegeons before I post any more of this. We'll see if that actually happens, but I'm going to try, mostly because starting in the next few chapters there will be references to things that happen in Nous Vous Protegeons, and it would be better if you actually read the story first.


	7. Chapter 7

“Professor Stilinski?”

Stiles turns around from where he’s packing up his bag after his Werewolves in Pop Culture class to see a werewolf poking his head into the room. “Yeah? What can I do for you?”

The werewolf walks the rest of the way into the room, leaning against the door frame. “You’re, uh—I know that this information isn’t supposed to be public, with A2P and everything, but one of my friends said you were the ashbreaker who broke the druid-keyed circle a few days ago.”

A2P, or the Ashbreaker Anonymity and Protection Act of 1987, was a law that made it so news organizations, hospitals, cops, schools, and basically anyone else weren’t allowed to release personal information about ashbreakers, accredited or emergency, without their permission. It came about after a number of ashbreaker murders, including a fourteen-year-old emergency ashbreaker. But people talk, so he isn’t surprised people on campus knew.

“Yeah, that was me.” He pulls out his accreditation from his wallet and hands it to the werewolf, who checks it over and hands it back. “Is there something I can help you with? Do you need anything ashbroken now?” He hopes not, because that means that people are laying ash on campus now, and that would be awful.

The werewolf shakes his head. “No, no, I’m good right now. I’m—so, my name is Evan Cho, and I’m the head of the Werewolf Student Association here on campus. We don’t have an ashbreaker right now—we haven’t needed one, this has always been a safe campus—but our next meeting is tomorrow, and we’re concerned about all of us being in one room without an ashbreaker.”

“Totally understandable.” Though it sucked that that was something they had to be concerned about.

Evan nods. “Yeah. So we were wondering—well, I was wondering—if you would be willing to be our ashbreaker for the meeting. I know it’s kind of last minute, so I understand if you can’t.”

Stiles would agree to it regardless, because students should always be able to meet without fear and generally go to school without fear, but especially without Derek at home, there’s no reason to say no. “I’d be happy to. If you just give me the information—location, time, things like that—I’ll make sure I’m there a bit early.”

“Thank you.” Stiles pulls out a piece of paper and pen and hands them to Evan, who leans the paper up against the wall so he can scrawl something on it. “I really do appreciate it in advance. And, though, if you don’t mind me asking, how can you break druid-keyed ash? I mean, you don’t smell like a druid, and I’m sorry if that’s intrusive of me to say, but it’s true.”

Stiles takes the paper back and sticks it in his bag, then slings the bag over one shoulder and starts towards the door. “I have to get going, but you can walk with me if you’d like. And you’re right—I’m not a druid. I am druid-trained, though; my pack’s emissary is a druid.”

“Your pack? Are you pack-affiliated, or…?”

Stiles shakes his head as they walk out into the hallway. “No, I’m in a pack. The McCall pack, up in Beacon Hills. We’re fairly small, with a fairly low proportion of actual werewolves, but…yeah, we’re a pack.”

“Well, nice to meet you. I’m from the Errin pack, down in SoCal.”

Huh, that’s a pack Stiles has actually heard of. “Your alpha’s on the Alpha Council, right? In Congress, I mean.”

Evan nods. “One of them is. We actually have two alphas, but Jake was the original heir, so he’s the one on the Alpha Council. I’m actually hoping to intern with the Council over the summer; they have name-blind and pack-blind internship selection, so unfortunately I don’t have the in it seems like I should have with that.”

“Good luck with that.” Stiles hadn’t actually known that, but of course, he had never wanted to go out to DC for longer than a few days. Even spending so long out of Beacon Hills is hard for him sometimes, and especially had been during college. “Are you concerned about your pack bond stretching that far?”

Evan glances at him then half smiles and looks back at the hallway. “I had almost forgotten that you’re part of a pack. No, so the thing about being double-alpha’ed is that we can have Jake be in DC up to maybe two-thirds of the year. Not the whole year; it starts to stretch and get uncomfortable and Elizabeth can’t hold the whole net up herself without something starting to pull.”

The kid’s talking about his net—and he’s really not a kid, he’s probably 21 or 22, but wow Stiles feels old. “You’re a metaphysics focus, aren’t you?”

He laughs. “Politics focus, actually, but yeah, I’m in 407 right now.”

“My worst class.” Though now he kind of wishes he could have been better at it, because it might make all of this shit with the Nemeton make more sense. “Well, this is my stairwell, so I’ll see you tomorrow. It was nice to meet you, Evan.”

“Good to meet you too, Professor Stilinski. And thank you, again.”

\--

Stiles shows up to the classroom he’s supposed to be ashbreaking for twenty minutes early and takes a seat on one of the tables, swinging one leg back and forth as he texts Derek. Derek has only been texting sporadically since he left, which is (Stiles knows, he knows, he’s just insecure) because he’s busy with Laura and Peter, the latter of whom is one person he is really glad not to have to see again.

Evan walks in first and nods at him. “Professor Stilinski, thanks for coming.”

“Of course.” The werewolf starts pulling out chairs and pushing tables out of the way, so Stiles hops off his table. “Want any help?”

“No, I’m good. We’re only probably going to get maybe half a dozen people today, maybe eight if we’re lucky, so this shouldn’t take too long. You want to join in the circle or just watch from on high?”

“I’ll stay over here.” There’s a good line of sight to the door, which he can also get to quickly, and the window, which faces out towards trees and not much out. Which is both good and bad, and he really doesn’t want to think about that right now.

The door opens again, and a few more werewolves walk in; they look at Stiles, then head over to start helping Evan. They end up with eight chairs set up, so apparently they’re being optimistic, with all of the tables shoves off to the side. There’s a chair in front of Stiles now, and he moves to it because he doesn’t want to have to climb over it if anything happens.

A few more people wander in, and then Cole walks in, stops, and starts beaming. “Professor Tsunade.”

Stiles really does like the kid. “Technically that starts with a ‘t’. Or a つ, I guess, really.”

“Damn. Okay, I’ll keep working.” He looks around, and the students are distinctly not paying attention to them, which means that they’re actually paying attention to them. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m your official ashbreaker for the meeting.” He raises his voice to make sure everyone knows that he knows they’re listening. “I’m not here to listen in on anything or get involved in anything that you don’t want me involved in. I’m just here to keep you all safe.”

One of the werewolves slumped in a chair snaps, “This is bullshit.”

Oh, great. Evan looks at the kid, asking, “What?”

“We shouldn’t need a human to keep us safe from the humans who want to kill us. We should be able to protect ourselves, not have to rely on fucking—fucking _humans_.”

“Believe me, I wish werewolves could protect themselves from mountain ash.”

Immediately he knows that was the wrong thing to say, because the werewolf’s eyes go golden. “Right, so you can just tell the rest of us to go fuck off and sit in your nice ivory tower. Because fuck werewolves. Fuck the rest of us.”

He’s not going to freak out on this kid. It’s not going to happen, even though Cole’s eyes are golden too, and wow, he really doesn’t want this to turn into a dominance match over him. “No, it’s because every werewolf member of my pack has gotten close to death because they were trapped by mountain ash, except for the one who’s dead because none of the humans could get to him in time. So yeah, I wish like hell werewolves didn’t need to rely on us, because then one of my friends would still be alive.”

The werewolf stares at him for a second, until Evan claps his hands, and he looks away, crossing his arms across his chest. “Okay. Time to get going. As was probably not clear from Cole because…whatever, this is Professor Stilinski, one of the Werewolf studies professors and an accredited ashbreaker, the one who broke the druid-keyed circle last week. He’s here to help, so please, keep your fangs to yourself.”

The werewolf growls. “Please, you’re not my alpha.”

“Yeah, well, you’re being a dick. I don’t need to be your alpha to tell you that.” Evan takes one of the seats in the circle, and the other werewolves follow suit. It’s only once they’re all seated that Cole breaks away and walks over to one of the empty seats, finally unbristling. It’s kind of sweet, but also, really, he doesn’t need another protector. His whole pack plus Derek and, sometimes, Chris Argent is more than enough. “Anyone have any other objections to something keeping us from being trapped in here? No? Great. What do you want to talk about?”

They start talking about issues with being a werewolf in college, which would be fascinating, but he’s not here to listen in because that would be a total breach of privacy. And also he has stuff to grade and a chance to get it done because Derek isn’t around, which also, yeah, that’s kind of making him sad again, so he just pulls out essays from his Werewolves in Pop Culture class and starts reading through them.

They’re not bad, mostly, which is what you get from a higher level class, and he’s really glad to get to teach it, because it is one of his passions. Because it’s fascinating, really, to see how popular culture has affected how people interact with werewolves. There’s more fear, in some ways, but there’s also less, because they’re being normalized and popularized. The problem is, though, that there are some weird misconceptions that have been spread, like the full-moon-means-changing-for-all-werewolves one, and the werewolves-are-the-only-supernatural-creatures one.

The second one is one he had learned was wrong sooner than most. Most never see anything other than werewolves, and if they do, they don’t know it. Because the kitsune hide, and the were-coyotes, and everything else that doesn’t fit in that neat little werewolf box.

So he can’t really blame his students for not knowing. That’s the whole point, that people don’t know. Because people aren’t particularly good at knowing.

“So what pack are you from?”

Stiles looks up to see one of the werewolves standing a few feet away from him; the rest of them are standing in small clumps, chatting. “McCall pack, up in Beacon Hills.” Which is actually an important thing to bring up. “Speaking of which, hey, everyone, can I have your attention for a sec?” Seven werewolves look at him, and yeah, he’s glad he’s used to teaching classes of a hundred, because that’s an intimidating stare. “In a week and a half or so, I’m bringing someone from my pack down here to do a demonstration for my Werewolves 101 class—Cole’s in it, I’ve talked to him about it—and there’s a chance of my alpha coming down as well. I know that causes some problems with the neutrality of the area, which is why I wanted to talk to you guys first about it. I can put you in touch with him—and with the other werewolf coming down—if you’d like. And you can say no if you’d like, too.”

They all exchange looks, including Cole, because in the absence of an alpha werewolves agree through consensus, and then Evan asks, “Why do you want to bring the alpha here? Why an alpha?”

“Safety, primarily. He is stronger than any of the rest of us, and we’re not particularly comfortable with Isaac coming alone. Even with Allison coming, with the danger, it’s not—” He’s not explaining this particularly well. “I was injured over the summer in an HFU attack, and my alpha is reluctant for me to face another attack any time soon. With the fire, he is…concerned.”

There’s another set of looks exchanged, and then Evan asks, “How long?”

“Three days. And I can put you in touch with him and with Isaac before they show up.”

Cole nods, and then the rest of them do too, one after another, until the only two left are the Evan and the werewolf who had argued with him before. And then, slowly, that one nods too, and Evan says, “Okay. Give both of their contact information to us, and give Cole at least two days warning before they show up.”

“He’ll get a week, if he checks his email. Thank you. I’ll pass the message along.” He pulls out a piece of paper and scrawls Scott’s and Isaac’s names and cell phone numbers, then hands it to Cole, who passes it along to Evan, then leans over to look at it.

“Wait, is that Isaac Lahey? Like scarf person Isaac Lahey?” Cole sounds ecstatic.

Scarf person. Another thing he’s going to have to pass along to Isaac when he comes down. “Yeah. He’s part of my pack, one of the few werewolves actually in it. He was the second, after Scott, my alpha.”

“Holy shit, you know Isaac Lahey.” Cole gapes at him. “Is that how you have one of his scarves? He was the one who gave you one of his scarves for Christmas? That’s really cool.”

“He was excited to hear he had a fan.” Sort of. As excited as Isaac ever got, but he smiled, so it was something.

Cole flushes slightly as some of the other werewolves look at him. “Look, it’s just cool. I mean, we don’t usually see, you know, werewolf designers and stuff. They just want us for politics and construction and, well, porn. So I don’t know. I think it’s cool.” He clears his throat, then asks, “Do you think they’re going to attack again? The HFU, I mean, or whoever set the fire? Do you think they’re going to try to kill us again?”

Stiles really doesn’t want to answer this, but they’re all still watching him, and he is the adult in the room, isn’t he, and this is why he hates being the adult. “If it’s the HFU, if they were the ones who did it, then probably. A failed attack isn’t their style, not if they can help it. Only when it’s an unwinnable attack, like on the Pack Alliance and on the Hales. They couldn’t kill the rest of the Hales, not with all of the attention on them, so they let them go.”

Evan frowns. “You talk about the HFU like you know them.”

There are so many ways he can answer that, but these are just kids, and even if he lost that chance too young, he’s not going to do it to them. “I’m from Beacon Hills.”

“Right.” Evan scrubs his hand against his face; there’s a little bit of stubble. “Okay, well, meeting’s done, so thank you, again.”

\--

Going back to his empty apartment is still kind of weird, like he’s going to the wrong place, which is stupid because it’s not like he’s been dating Derek for that long. A few months, but it’s not like it’s been years. And it’s not like he hasn’t gone home at all since he started dating Derek. Just…not as much as before, which isn’t really saying much given that he basically lived at home, the coffee shop, and school before Derek.

So yeah, okay, his single life was pretty sad. But he has someone now, and he’s happy, and it seems like Derek is happy, too, so that’s good. Because Stiles doesn’t really have any other metrics to measure how his relationship is going. Because he’s never had a real relationship that lasted this long, anything past just fuck buddies. And part of that is because he’s a generally fucked up person who has problems with things that people around him do, but most of it is because he’s a generally fucked up person that other people can’t deal with. Because most people aren’t up for dealing with his panic attacks and his nightmares and the fact that he gets hurt more than most people who aren’t in the military or in gangs.

But Derek has stayed with him, and maybe that’s because Derek is a little fucked up too, but that’s okay, because they get each other, and he doesn’t need to say anything to get Derek to know that he might not be okay for a little while. And that’s fantastic.

He dials Derek’s number, then slumps down in his bed with his other hand behind his head as it rings. A few rings in, Derek picks up. “Hello?”

“Hi. It’s Stiles.”

Derek laughs, and it’s a fantastic sound. “I figured that out, thanks. How are you doing?”

“Things are going well. I miss you, though. My bed is so much smaller than yours.”

“You could have crashed at my place if you wanted.”

Stiles hadn’t even though of that, because that would be weird. “Nah, I’d rather wait until you’re back. It would be too big without you there. Want to have phone sex?”

There’s a short cough, like Stiles caught him mid-breath, and then Derek says, “Maybe a better choice once I’m not in a room full of people. Which, also, Peter, stop laughing, it’s not like you haven’t had phone sex in your life, and if you haven’t, that’s your loss.” Stiles stuff his free hand into his mouth to keep from laughing aloud, because yeah, go Derek. “And seriously, Laura, you don’t get to live vicariously through me. If you want to know about sex, find someone to sleep with. It’s awesome, but you don’t get mine.”

Aw, wow, that’s actually kind of sweet. In a possessive sort of way. But that’s okay. “I would let them know they couldn’t have you, either, but they are related to you, so that would be weird.”

Derek laughs again. “They can hear you, you know.”

“I do. Hi, Laura.”

There’s a pause, and then Derek says, “Laura says hi. And now I’m leaving the room with my family, because this really isn’t a conversation they need to listen in on. If you follow me, Peter, I’m going to rip your throat out.”

Huh. That bloodthirsty thing is actually kind of hot. Maybe it’s the biological imperative to find someone who can protect him. Or something. Whatever. Biology was never his best subject.

A moment later, Derek says, “Okay, my family’s out of earshot.”

“Great. Phone sex. Yea or nay? Or I guess we could do, like, Skype sex or something. Though I don’t know how that works. Do we just, like, wave our dicks at the camera until we come?”

“I don’t know, but I guess it’s worth a try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens when I don't want to study for finals.


	8. Chapter 8

Derek’s flight arrives at seven-oh-four, and Stiles makes it to the airport at six-fifty-seven, with just enough time to spare for him to get into the arrivals area and then _panic_. Not over anything in particular, just because his boyfriend is arriving and what if it’s _different_. Not that there’s anything to be different, but Stiles is just…

Stiles. He’s Stiles. Panicking is a thing he does, like talking too much and chewing on his thumb when he’s nervous.

So yeah. Panicking. Have to stop doing that, because werewolves don’t do too well when people they care about smell like fear. It makes them all antsy, and an antsy werewolf in a commercial airport terminal is not really optimal. For anyone. So he takes a few deep breaths like that one therapist taught him, a few fingers pressed to his neck so he can track his heartrate.

So he’s not really paying attention when the new plane arrival is called, and it’s not until the crowd is parting in front of him and Derek is stalking through the space that he realizes that, holy shit, Derek is back. And then Derek’s arms are around him, actually lifting him a couple inches off the ground, which is impressive because they’re basically the same height.

Derek buries his face in Stiles’s neck, still holding him an inch off the ground, and Stiles hears him muttering, “Jesus, I missed you. You smell so good.”

Stiles laughs. “Thanks. You smell good, too.”

Derek’s arms contract, and then he sets Stiles back down on the ground to look at him. “Sometimes I want to put Peter’s head through a window. Or a wall. I’ll settle for a wall.”

“Why is it ‘settling’ for a wall? Aren’t walls harder?”

Derek grabs his suitcase handle, then wraps an arm around Stiles’s waist and starts walking towards the exit. “Yes, but windows have glass.”

“You really sound like a psychopath, you know that, right? Like you genuinely sound terrifying. Not that I mind, because your uncle is kind of an asshole and tried to kill me, but maybe not the best idea in an airport.”

“It’s not like I’m getting on a plane, or that he’s here.” They get out towards the parking lot, and Stiles starts leading towards where he parked. “Want to head back to my apartment?”

That sounds great, except, “I need to grab my shit from my apartment.”

Derek nods, and there’s something oddly contemplative in his expression. And then it clears and he says, “Sounds good. I’ve only seen your apartment maybe twice, so can I take a look around when we get there? See how you live when you’re not with me?”

He took all the Kate Argent stuff off his walls, so that shouldn’t be a problem. “Yeah, sure. The car’s over there.”

\--

It takes forty-five minutes to get to his apartment, and Derek touches him the entire time, a hand on his shoulder, his leg (the latter gets vetoed once Derek’s hand gets a little too close to his dick, because he would rather not crash the car), like if he lets go Stiles will disappear. Which is an odd feeling, because he’s the one who always feels like his friends are going to disappear if he blinks for too long, that he’s the one who has to cling on or they’re going to slip through of his fingers.

And having someone who wants to hold on, that’s not a feeling he’s used to. Because his friends, they want him, sometimes they want him too much (because going back, it takes something from him, even as it gives him something), but he’s never dated someone who wanted him this much.

“What are you thinking about?”

Stiles glances over at Derek, then focuses back on his parking job because he still doesn’t want to crash. “Your hands.”

“No more phone sex.”

“Well, we can still have phone sex. We can just go in different rooms and talk to each other.”

Derek smirks at him, his hand landing back on Stiles’s upper thigh the second he turns the car off. “Well, I never made good on the threat of making you talk around a gag, so that might be a better use of your mouth.”

That definitely sounds like a better use of his mouth. “Or there could be something better for you to put in my mouth.”

The hand tightens on his thigh, somewhere between a promise and a threat. “My choice, not yours.”

One more thing he had missed. “Yeah.” Derek’s hand inches up his leg, and Stiles swallows. “Yeah. Your choice. But, uh, we should probably head inside or we’re going to be arrested for public indecency in not too long.”

Derek slides his thumb over Stiles’s hip then pulls away. “Let’s go.”

Stiles scrambles out of the car, grabbing Derek’s backpack from the back seat to expedite the process. Derek grimaces at him then pulls out his suitcase, looking like he wants to reach across the car and grab the backpack away. Which, seriously, Stiles can carry things. He’s not an invalid, or 90.

They get up to his apartment, and Stiles throws a bunch of clothes and stuff into a bag while Derek looks around like he’s trying to find mold. And it’s not like he doesn’t have stuff at Derek’s apartment, but he doesn’t keep a lot of clothes there, and he took most of it back when Derek headed out. But Derek is still examining everything, so Stiles drops down on his bed, stripping his shirt off and dropping it on the floor somewhere next to the bed.

Derek follows him into his bedroom, but he doesn’t go over to Stiles, instead wandering over to the closet and foraging through it, which, why. Shouldn’t Stiles—shirtless Stiles—be more appealing than a closet? But at the same time, watching Derek is also amazing, because he doesn’t move like a human, not really. People who don’t spend a lot of time watching werewolves probably wouldn’t notice, but that’s literally Stiles’s job, so he does.

And Derek…Derek moves like he’s stalking someone, like he’s trying to find prey wherever he goes and like he’s ready to catch it when he finds it. It’s fluid, knees bent a little more than for a human, arms held just so. And he has a fantastic ass. That doesn’t hurt.

Stiles lounges back on his bed, sliding his hand over his bare stomach. Derek is rummaging around in Stiles’s closet for no reason than he can figure out—seriously, there’s nothing in there of any worth at all—and damn it, he wants him to come back. They’ve only consummated his bed with mutual handjobs because they spend all of their time at Derek’s apartment because it is actually fit for two people, and he wants do get to blowjobs at the very least.

“Come on, deflower me already.”

Derek snorts from inside the closet (and wow, so many jokes he could make). “I think we’re a little past that.”

He moves his hand a little lower. “Come on. I’m going to try to figure out how to suck my own dick if you don’t—”

“What is this?”

Oh God, did he find his porn? “That depends on what you found.”

Derek stands and spins around, and in his hand is—newspapers. Fuck. “What I found is articles about my family. My fucking _family_ , and these are from years ago.”

Stiles shoots upright, sliding back until his back impacts with the wall behind him and curling his legs up in front of him because he feels really vulnerable being naked at the moment. “It’s not—it’s not what you think.”

Derek’s eyes glow, and it hits Stiles like a blow to the stomach, because they’re blue, and how did he not know this before? “What I think is that you decided to date me because you’re some sort of fucking victim-groupie or wanna-be detective who thought fucking me was a good way to get me to open up about it.”

Oh, fuck. “That’s not—I didn’t even know who you were when I started dating you. I didn’t know your name. How would I—how would I have seduced you for information if I didn’t know who you were?”

The newspaper crumples a little in Derek’s hand. “That’s what you said, but we can only tell lies from baselines, and you’re heartrate’s been a mess since I met you. You could have been lying the whole time.”

“My heartrate was a mess because I thought you were _hot_ , not because I was—that’s not—this is all from before that.”

“Then why did you hide it from me?”

Why did Derek think? “Because I didn’t think it would be all that romantic to fuck under pictures of your burned-out house and your statutory rapist.” Immediately, he knows that’s the wrong thing to say, because Derek goes absolutely rigid, then turns and stalks out of the room, newspaper fluttering to the ground as Stiles scrambles off of the bed and starts trying to find clothes so he doesn’t run out of his apartment totally naked. “Derek, wait. _Derek_.” But by the time he gets out of the apartment, Derek is gone.

Well, he fucked that up.

\--

Stiles doesn’t chase after him because Scott said not to all those months ago, and because he doesn’t know what the hell he would say. ‘I’m sorry I kept all of my newspaper clippings about your family and the person who seduced you when you were a teenager so she could kill your family’? ‘I’m sorry I didn’t hide them better’? ‘I’m sorry I had them at all’?

And it’s not like he’s ashamed of that part of himself, because he’s cared a lot about that for a long time, and it’s not like investigating something is a bad thing, but at the same time, it is kind of fucked up that he has all of that in his closet. Though that is marginally better than having it on his walls like he used to.

But he’s not sure what to do right now. Normally he would call Scott, but this is his fuck-up, and he doesn’t really want to admit it. Not even to Scott, who doesn’t judge. Except when he does. But saying it out loud just makes the fuck-up a little more real, and maybe it’ll just…fix itself.

Yeah, he doesn’t believe that, either.

So he just unpacks his stuff from the bag he had thrown all of it in, then calls for Chinese food because there’s no way in hell he’s up for cooking at the moment. Though inevitably he will be baking cookies at two in the morning, but he doesn’t want to make real non-sugar food.

Derek’s backpack and suitcase are gone, which means that there isn’t even a built-in easy excuse for him to come back to get them. Which sucks. And he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Derek doesn’t come back. So he texts him.

8:14 PM Stiles Stilinski to Derek Hale: Can we talk?

When he wakes up at nine with six dozen cookies in his kitchen and a pie on his table, there’s no response.

And he knows that he needs to fix this, but he’s not sure how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry.


	9. Chapter 9

“We’re going to go get coffee.”

Stiles blinks up at Lydia, who’s standing in the doorway of his office, then checks the time. “I still have office hours for another, uh, seventeen minutes. And then I have a couple dozen essays to—”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Nobody is here for your office hours, and anyway, why don’t you get yourself a TA?”

“Because I like talking to my students. And also I can’t use the ‘I don’t have time to grade a hundred students’ physics homework’ excuse.”

Lydia stalks over in her absurdly high heels to turn off his monitor, then drops down in his lap like that’s not a totally inappropriate thing to do in his office. Though she would be a fantastic beard if he needed a beard. Which especially doesn’t seem to be a problem right now because Derek isn’t talking to him. Because fuck his life.

“Why are you on top of me?”

She drums her nails against his knee. “You’re looking touch-starved, and also tense. Come on. Let’s go get coffee, and then you can cry about your boyfriend issues.”

Stiles drops his head down on hers. “Can I just…not think about Derek for a little while? Like, I fucked up and I know I fucked up, and I just don’t want to think about it because I don’t know what the fuck I can do.”

“Sure.” Lydia hops off of his lap, and he gets up and follows her because he really does love her, and it doesn’t matter that it’s not really romantic or sexual, not anymore. Because she knows what it’s like to be human in a pack, in their pack, and she knows what it’s like to not be able to breathe because she’s scared. “I can talk about my research, instead.”

They head out of his office, and he closes and locks the door behind him. “What is your research on again, anyway? Magic space particles or something?”

“You don’t get to play the idiot, either.”

“I’m not the one who’s going to win a Fields Medal.”

She shoots him a fond look. “I’m doing work on string theory. There’s some really fascinating research being done out of MIT that I’m jointly working on, though we don’t have the same level of resources here, obviously.”

“Do you ever resent it?” When she doesn’t respond, he adds, “That you’re stuck here, I mean, and that you can’t go out to MIT for longer than the few years it took you to complete your undergrad?”

There’s a pause, and then Lydia sighs. “I did during undergrad, a couple of times, when pack called and I didn’t have a choice, or when I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay because the bond was already stretching too thin. But the thing is that I made a choice to be in the pack and to stay here, and I’d rather have a pack and be here than be alone there.”

“Yeah.” Stiles shoves his hand through his hair. “Okay, yeah.”

“Do you want out?” He opens his mouth to answer then closes it, and she looks at him. “It’s not a judgment question.”

“No. I just, sometimes I wish we were safe. All of us. Because it’s not that I want out, it’s just that I want the pack to be…different, sometimes. I don’t know, that sounds shitty. It’s not that I want them to be different people. It’s just that sometimes I want them—us—to not spend all of our time running into danger and then getting hurt.”

She laughs, and there’s that small hurt note behind the sound that he’s way too used to. “A lot of that is you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I want me to be a different person.”

They reach the campus coffee shop and get on line, and then she turns to look at him. “What the hell is going on with you? You said Derek wasn’t talking to you, not that you had lost your mind.”

“You know what my bedroom used to look like?”

“Your—oh, for God’s sake, Stiles.”

Stiles scrubs his palms over his eyes; he feels like he hasn’t slept in a month. “Look, I stuck it all in a box in my closet and forgot about it. I’d barely been home in, God, weeks, and only once with him.”

“What was he doing in your closet?”

He throws his hands up, narrowly missing hitting a stand of weird fruit snacks. “I don’t know. He’s a werewolf. Werewolves like to know about the territory they’re in. And I should have told him, or…I don’t know, but it’s too late for that now. And he’s not picking up his phone or answering my texts, so I’m not really sure how to explain it now. Or even if I have a good enough explanation.”

“And this makes you want to stop throwing yourself in front of danger? I would say you should break up with your boyfriend more often, but that would be mean.”

“Like that ever stopped you before.”

Lydia rolls her eyes then steps up to place her order of black coffee—which is a terrifying order; Stiles can’t drink black coffee even when he’s sleep deprived and has a hundred hours of work left to do—and then pays and moves aside so he can order a caramel caffè macchiato. Because he likes sugar. So sue him.

Actually, please don’t. He doesn’t have enough money to be sued.

“So he sees the newspaper—”

“—newspapers.”

“—box, whatever, and what, freaks out? Attacks you? Yells at you? What?”

Stiles sighs, walking over to the part of the counter where they’ll give him his coffee. “He yelled at me a little, then walked out. Took his shit with him, his suitcase and his backpack, and he’s not answering his phone, and look, can we stop talking about this?”

“Fine.” She slides a hand up his back, and he leans back into it, because yeah, he’s kind of touch-starved. It’s how he gets when he’s stressed, and Jesus, he’s glad Lydia also teaches at NCU so he doesn’t need to go all the way up to Beacon Hills to get a hug. “I was thinking we should all go out to dinner when the almost-threesome come down. Someplace so you and Isaac don’t need to cook and you don’t eat Chinese food or whatever you survive on when you’re not mainlining cookies.”

“I eat…Mexican food.” And yeah, that sounded weak even to him. “Yeah, okay. Do you really call them the ‘almost-threesome’?”

“Well, it’s not like they’re fucking anymore. Though, honestly, they should be.” The barista puts down a cup of black coffee with Lydia’s name scrawled on it, and Lydia picks it up and drains a quarter of it in one go. She must really need coffee. “Some days I want to just steal their clothes and shove them in bed together, Kira be damned.”

“She’s not a bad…person.”

Lydia rolls her eyes, drinking more of her coffee. “No, but Allison and Isaac were pack first, and I have more of a vested interest in seeing the two of them happy than her.”

His coffee’s handed over, and they start over towards one of the only empty tables in the shop. “She is pack.” He doesn’t know why he’s arguing, exactly, except that’s what he does. “And she did help.”

Lydia shrugs. “I’d trade her happiness for Isaac’s or for Allison’s any day. Isaac and Allison together? Even better.”

“What about Scott’s happiness?”

“It’s not like they don’t make him happy.” She reaches out to touch Stiles’s collar. “You really do need to learn how to dress like an actual adult. Which involves wearing clothing other than t-shirts.”

He looks down at what he’s wearing. “I have a flannel on.”

She taps on his collarbone with her ridiculously long nails. “Over a t-shirt. You are in your twenties. You’re a professor.”

“It’s not like my students care how I dress.” And speaking of his students, “Cole.” Cole looks up from where he’s standing two tables away, head down as he taps away on his phone, and then he lights up and heads over. “Cole, this is Professor Martin—she’s a member of my pack. Lydia, this is Cole. He’s in my Werewolves 101 class.”

Cole smiles shyly at her. “Hi. Nice to meet you. Do you also teach Werewolf Studies?”

Lydia laughs. “No. Theoretical Mathematics.”

“My cousin studied that at Stanford.” He glances at his phone like it’s giving him answers. “Well, that and theoretical physics, but I think she liked the math more.”

It’s interesting, really, the way that people in packs do that. They have a tendency to brag through their pack—it’s less about look what I did and more about look at how cool my pack-mate is. It’s kind of a werewolf thing, but Stiles still has to restrain himself from doing that because it sounds a little more like namedropping when Stiles talks about Isaac or Allison, at least around humans. But for pack, it’s showing your pride for your pack.

And the good part about Lydia being in a pack, too, is that she gets it, too. “Do you know what she’s working on now?”

Cole shrugs. “Sorry, no. I mean, she tried to explain it, but I stopped listening at around ‘math’.” He looks at the two of them. “I’ll—I don’t want to interrupt your—”

Oh, that’s the ‘these two people are dating’ look. “Not a problem. Have you gotten in touch with Isaac or Scott?”

“I emailed your alpha, uh, Scott, but I’m—he’s Isaac Lahey.”

Stiles sees Lydia hiding a smirk behind her coffee cup, but he doesn’t comment, not wanting to embarrass Cole. “He’d be happy for you to confirm with him before he shows up. We do want you all to be comfortable as possible with people coming down from another pack, especially because the neutrality is going to be tricky while they’re down here.”

“Yeah. I, uh—” His phone chimes, and he glances down at it. “Sorry, I have to—it was nice to meet you, Professor Martin.” And then he hurries away.”

Lydia waits until he’s out of the shop before turning to smirk at Stiles. “So this is your new favorite. He’s cute.”

“Ew. He’s like eighteen.”

“Still legal.” She waits—presumably until he looks suitably horrified—before laughing at him. “I’m kidding. I have no intention of having sex with your eighteen-year-old student, or any eighteen-year-old. Though it’s worth saying it just to see your face.” She sighs. “Are you really that concerned about neutrality?”

“It’s the only reason that schools like this can run the way they do, with multiple packs here at the same time. Bringing an alpha, even for a few days, it threatens to tip the balance, and even the fact that we have two professors from the same pack, it could have gotten dicey.”

“You said they’re fine with it, though.”

“The ones that I’ve talked to, yeah, but…I don’t want to fuck up the culture of the school just to bring Scott down.”

Lydia takes another drink of coffee, then grimaces at the cup. “How could he go to college, then?”

“Beacon Hills Community College is in his territory, so neutrality was never an issue. NCU’s in a neutral territory, so no pack holds it, and so we can have random werewolves coming and going.”

She stares at him for a minute, then snorts. “This is why I never wanted to go into Werewolf Studies. All your rules seem totally arbitrary.”

“They’re not my rules.” He drinks some of his coffee, and ah, sugar.

\--

Halfway through his Werewolves 101 class, Evan bursts into the class, face flushed, and says, “They’re ashing werewolves in their rooms.”

Oh, fuck. Stiles’s heart almost stops, and then he turns to his class. “Class dismissed, the notes will be up like usual. If any of you are certified ashbreakers and are willing to help, come with me.” He looks at Evan. “How many werewolves, and where?”

Evan looks at his phone. “We’re up to three in Brooks, four—shit, five in Keeler, and two in Severn.”

That’s too many, in too many different places. “How many ashbreakers do you have?”

He looks back up at Stiles. “At the moment, you. A2P, remember?”

Fuck, right. “Okay, I have an ashbreaker I can call, and she should be on campus. She’s pack—I trust her.”

Evan nods, and Stiles finishes packing up his stuff and follows him out of the room. The werewolf is walking fast, but at human speeds. “Okay. Motherfu—we have another one in Keeler.”

“How are you getting this information?”

Evan glances at him. “We do check-ins when there’s danger.”

Smart. “I’m going to need the room numbers, along with your phone number. I’ll head to Keeler and send the other ashbreaker to Brooks.”

Still walking, Evan holds out his hand for Stiles’s phone, and it only takes him a few seconds before he hands it back. “I’ll text you the room numbers for all of them so you can pass it along to your other ashbreaker.” They’re at the door to the outside, and Evan pauses for a second. “Thank you. Really.”

“Of course.” And then he dials Lydia’s number, holding his phone up to his ear as it rings once, twice, and then she picks up. “Tell me you’re on campus.”

“I’m holding office hours. What’s going on?”

Oh, thank God. “Someone—or, probably, multiple people—are ashing werewolves into their dorm rooms, and I need your help. Head to Brooks Hall, and I’ll text you the room numbers when I—” His phone chimes in his ear. “When I get off the phone with you.”

There’s a second’s pause, and then she says, “Okay, give me five minutes.”

“Tell me once you’ve gotten through Brooks.” And then he hangs up, texting the information Evan just sent him to her.

As soon as it’s sent, he takes off running, heading towards Keeler Hall because he doesn’t want to leave these werewolves in ashed rooms any longer than necessary. Especially if they’re planning on doing something to them once they’re ashed. Because he will not be too late again. Never again.

The first room is on the second floor, and Stiles can see the line of ash just barely visible in the space between the door and the floor. Which, shit, is not somewhere he can reach without the people inside opening the door.

So he knocks, and a second later someone inside snaps, “What?”

Stiles takes in a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. “My name is Stiles Stilinski, and I’m a professor here at NCU. I’m an accredited ashbreaker under Druid Alan Deaton in Beacon Hills, as well as a member of the McCall Pack in Beacon Hills. Evan sent me to ashbreak your room, but the line is under your door, so I can’t get to it without you opening the door.”

The werewolf hesitates for a moment, and Stiles tries to rein in his impatience because he still has half a dozen rooms to go. “How do I know you are who you say you are?”

Any other time, Stiles would be happy by werewolves being this safety conscious, but he really doesn’t have the time. “You can call or text Evan and check with him.”

There’s another pause, longer this time, and Stiles keeps himself busy by checking his phone. And, okay, there isn’t another one in Keeler, but another werewolf’s been ashed into his room in Severn. He had known whatever was going on wasn’t over, but this is bad.

There’s a noise from inside the room, and then the door opens, revealing a miserable-looking werewolf and a long line of ash across the entrance to the room. The werewolf grimaces at him. “Sorry about that. Just not sure who to trust at the moment.”

“No problem. Better safe than sorry.” He crouches down to brush away the ash, because if this is druid-keyed he doesn’t want to find out by rebounding into the wall behind him. But it’s not, it’s just plain ash, and it wipes away easily. “Do you own a vacuum?”

The werewolf nods. “Yeah.”

“Then I’d get this up before leaving if I were you. I have to go ‘break another few rooms.”

“Thank you.”

Stiles stands, brushing ash off his knees. “No problem. If you have the number of any of the other werewolves ashed into their room in Keeler, can you text them and tell them I’m coming?”

“I only have the number for one of them.”

“It’ll still help. Thanks.” And then Stiles hurries over towards the stairs, because he has more rooms to go.

By the time he gets through all of the rooms, another four had been ashed, and he has mountain ash smeared all over his face because he keeps wiping his hands on his face. And now he’s supposed to go talk to the administration, but God, he really doesn’t want to do that.

Lydia nudges his shoulder from where she’s sitting next to him. “You okay?”

“I fucking hate this. We were done, you know? We came here because we were done with the werephobia _shit_ that follows us everywhere.”

She puts her hand on the back of his neck, and he drops his head down because motherfucker, he’s tired. “I know. Do you want to call Scott, or should I?”

“Shit.”

“I’ll do it.”

Stiles picks his head up to shake it. “You have to tell him that he can’t come down here, not with everything that’s going on.”

She laughs. “If you think this will deter Scott from coming down here…”

Right. Fuck. Of course not. Why would he expect Scott would have even a modicum of sense? “Fuck. I wanted it to be done. You know, all of this shit with the HFU, I wanted it to be done, but I guess it’s something that you can never get away from.”

“It’s not your fault, you know.”

She knows him too well. But still, “We were the ones who turned it into a beacon.”

“The HFU has nothing to do with the beacon, and you know that as well as I do. Now get the fuck over it. I have to go call our alpha.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LYDIA!
> 
> Also, I'm officially done with this semester (yay) so I thought I would finish this chapter.


	10. Chapter 10

Stiles will be the first to admit that he doesn’t get enough sleep. Years of nightmares and too much stress plus a propensity for caffeine means that he tends not sleep as long or as early as he should. But it also means that, when he is sleeping and he feels safe, he can sleep like the dead.

Which is his excuse for not waking up until Scott is literally on top of him, sitting on his legs like that’s a normal thing for people to do. “What the fuck?” Stiles tries to flail away, his body ready to go before his mind fully switches from sleep to maybe-danger, but Scott is too strong, and there’s a wall behind Stiles, which makes the flailing not particularly effective. “Jesus, Scott, get off me.”

Scott grins down at him, then swings off him to land on the floor, arms crosses across his chest. “You need to pay better attention.”

“I felt _safe_.” He pushes up so his back is to the wall; his heart is pounding in his chest. “God _damn_ it. And Isaac, seriously, stop laughing at me.”

Isaac snorts from where he’s standing in the corner of the room, oversized scarf wrapped around his throat even though it’s only the end of October. “I haven’t seen anything that funny in months.”

“Asshole.” He looks back at Scott, who is still snickering. “Assholes. Both of you.” He raises his voice. “And you, too, Allison, for not stopping them.”

“Allison is at Lydia’s.”

“Oh, so Lydia gets a regular wake-up.”

Scott laughs. “If I sat on her she would stab me.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t stab you.”

“Your knife is on your end table.” Stiles looks, and damn, Isaac is right. Because he had gotten in the habit of not sleeping with it beneath his pillow once he started sleeping with Derek, and damn it, he’s going to need to get back into that habit. “Come on, get up. Let’s go get food.”

Stiles swings out of bed, looking down at his boxers. “I should probably put clothes on first. Which means both of you need to get out of my room.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Which is true, but still, “I got enough of being naked in front of people I wasn’t dating in the locker room in high school, so out. Now.”

Isaac rolls his eyes at him and then heads out of the room, and Scott follows after him, shutting the door behind him. Which is good, because it gives Stiles a minute to get his breathing under control, because Jesus. _Jesus_. He’s so fucking glad he didn’t stab them. Not that Scott or Isaac couldn’t stop him—or heal—but still.

And then he grabs clothes to put on, because he really does need to get dressed.

Having his friends—his pack—here is so goddamn necessary, because he’s so damn sick of being so damn scared all the fucking time, and even if this is going to fuck with neutrality and fuck with the werewolf students at the school, he _needs_ it.

He needs Derek, too, but given that he hasn’t answered the last five calls or twelve texts, that’s not really a choice at the moment.

If he still won’t answer by the time Scott and Isaac and Allison are gone, Stiles is going to his apartment, because fuck that, they need to talk. He’s not sure what to say, but they need to talk.

“What’s taking so long?”

Stiles shoves his second foot in a sock, shouting back, “Calm down, I’m almost done.”

There’s pounding on his door, and then Isaac calls, “Hurry up. I’m hungry.”

Jesus. He yanks his door open just in time to almost get hit in the face by Isaac’s fist. “I need to go piss, and then we can go.” Isaac doesn’t move. “That means you need to get out of my way.” Isaac moves just enough for Stiles to squeeze past, which Stiles does, shoving at his shoulder; there’s a snicker. “God, you would have been so much more of an asshole if Scott hadn’t been the one to save you.”

“Aww, thanks.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole now—and why are you following me? Unless you’re planning on watching me pee.” And then he shoves into his bathroom, and wow, sometimes he forgets how much of a son of a bitch Isaac really is. And on one hand, yeah, he had a shitty childhood, and there are some things that he does that Stiles can see how they came from his godawful, thank-god-he’s-dead, father, but he’s also just kind of an asshole.

When he comes out of the bathroom, Scott is tapping on his phone, Isaac looking vaguely concerned. While is not a great sign. “What’s up?”

Isaac looks up at him, then glances over at Scott. After a second, Scott looks up at him. “Liam’s considering joining the Were Corps.”

“Oh, fuck no.”

Isaac snorts. “That’s what Scott said. You can imagine how well that went over.”

Right. Because Liam is a pain in the ass, but he’s also stubborn as hell. “Any indication why he wants to get himself sent to wherever the fuck we’re at war with at the moment?”

Scott grimaces at his phone, then sticks it in his pocket. The argument is over for the moment, apparently. “He wants to ‘contribute’. His word, not mine.”

“Because he thinks risking his life is contributing?”

“It’s his life.”

“You’re his alpha.”

Scott’s lips thin. “It’s his life, and I’m not going to keep talking about this.”

Stiles sighs, but the alpha has spoken, and this is a pack thing, so Scott’s word actually is law. “Fine. Are Lydia and Allison joining us for breakfast?”

“Yeah.” Scott pushes off from the table, then turns back to look at it when the movement shifts some of the plates. “How many cookies have you baked this week?”

Stiles scans the table, and huh. “Few dozen.” Scott levels a look at him. “And by few I mean like twelve. Don’t give me that look, I’ve been feeding them to my students. And don’t judge me on my maybe-breakup habits. You’re honestly not any better.”

Isaac shoots him a sharp look, but he’s not going to say anything more about that, because he really doesn’t want to keep talking about it. They all have their issues, and honestly, that’s not the worst of his. The knife? So much worse, and that one Scott encourages, so really, he doesn’t have a ground to stand on. Other than being the alpha, which does count for…a lot, actually.

Stiles doesn’t want to keep dealing with this, so he claps his hands. “Yes. Right. Food. There’s a good breakfast place nearby, so…food. You want to text Lydia or should I?”

\--

They all pile into Piece of Cake, the bakery/diner between his apartment and Lydia’s, and the hostess takes one look at them and sticks them in the back, away from the rest of the patrons. Which, honestly, he can’t blame her for, especially because they get enough partial packs wandering through because of NCU that she’s probably used to pack antics.

Scott sits in the middle of one side of the six chairs, with Stiles to his right and Allison to his left. Isaac sits across from him, with Lydia across from Stiles. It’s how they sit when it’s just the five of them; when Kira’s there, she sits next to Scott, and Allison sits across from her. It’s in order of rank, in some vague way that Stiles tries not to think about too hard.

Once they’ve all ordered, Scott sighs and turns towards Stiles. “How bad has it gotten?”

“Can I call a moratorium on this conversation until after we’ve eaten?”

Scott clicks his teeth, then turns to look at Lydia, who rolls her eyes. “The problem isn’t going to go away in the hour it takes for us to eat in peace.”

Scott sighs again, and Stiles feels kind of bad for him. He’s never had it easy as an alpha—few who end up as alpha as teenagers do—but things had finally started to settle down. He really doesn’t deserve the shit that comes with having the pack and the territory that he does. And then Scott nods. “Okay. New question—Thanksgiving plans. Who are we inviting?”

Stiles blinks at him. “You mean other than the pack?”

“Yeah. Are we inviting the affiliated, too?”

Ah. “I want my dad invited.”

Scott inclines his head, then focuses on Allison. “Your dad?”

She purses her lips, looking at Stiles instead of Scott. “I would, but…if you’re back together with Derek and he’s coming, that wouldn’t be a great idea.”

Right. Probably not. “I…don’t know. He’s not picking up the phone, so I honestly don’t know where I stand with him.”

“We have some time, so unless anyone has any objections, we’ll call that a maybe.” Isaac grimaces but doesn’t say anything, which could mean anything from having objections to being hungry, so they don’t push it. “How about Mason?”

Nobody says anything, so Stiles answers, “I vote we leave that up to Liam.”

Scott looks around and, when there are no objections, he shrugs. “Works for me. Parrish?”

Lydia grimaces, which okay, that’s a no. She had a thing with Parrish that originally didn’t go very far because she wasn’t eighteen and it would be bad for a deputy to commit statutory rape, and then it went really far, really fast when she turned eighteen, crashed, reignited, crashed again, and then sort of leveled out to peaceful nothingness when she officially started working at NCU. “I vote no.”

“So we’re at pack plus my mom and Sheriff Stilinski and maybes for Mr. Argent and Mason.” Scott taps on the table, and with that, it’s done.

It’s how good pack decisions are made: for non-tactical and non-immediate decisions, the alpha is mostly just the veto and the peacemaker. During fights, of course, they have immediate and final say, and like Scott did before, they can shut down any conversation they want, but good alphas don’t do that for every conversation they don’t want to have.

And Scott, for all his flaws, is a good alpha.

The waitress delivers the food—pancakes for Stiles; scrambled eggs and hash browns for Lydia; waffles for Allison; and then pancakes, waffles, bacon, sausage, and eggs for both Scott and Isaac—with the help of two waiters, and they all dig in.

Once Stiles comes up for air, a pancake and a half later, he turns to Scott. “How many students contacted you? Most of them aren’t in my classes, so I haven’t been able to ask.”

Scott swallows the half of a sausage in his mouth, then says, “I got emails from six of them. They mostly just wanted to know about the pack and about how long I’ll be in town for. One of them said he’ll be in the class where we’re transforming.”

“Cole?”

“Yeah.”

Stiles grins at Isaac. “He’s your fanboy.”

Isaac looks offended through his mouthful of egg. “He didn’t—” He swallows, then tries again. “He didn’t email me.”

“He didn’t want to make a bad impression, but he’s been basically jumping out of his skin wanting to meet you.”

“Does he want to go into fashion?”

Stiles shrugs. “Not that I know of. I think he’s just really excited to have a famous werewolf who isn’t in politics, or at least that’s what he said.”

“What about—” Allison swallows, then tries again. “What about Hale?”

That hurts, a little, which is dumb, because it’s not like Stiles doesn’t think about Derek all the fucking time. But hearing his name aloud, coming from someone else, it’s like acid behind his sternum. “The fact that he’s actually a Hale—a werewolf Hale—isn’t known to the general public. As long as you’re talking about D. Hale and not just…Derek, because he’s—well, it’s not politics, exactly, but I don’t know if I would call him famous, either—”

“I was talking about D. Hale.” Allison looks a little sorry she asked which, yeah, join the club. “Have you—”

“Not talking about it.” She grimaces at him, clearly ready to start asking him again, and he seriously considers just sticking his fingers in his ears and singing until she stops. Because no, he doesn’t want to talk about it, and no, he doesn’t want to think about it, and no, he hasn’t gotten in touch with Derek, thank you very much, so please stop asking.

“Well,” Lydia says, clapping her hands, and they all startle, “I have class in half an hour, and you have office hours, so we’re going to need to head out.”

Stiles checks his watch, and right, fuck, office hours. “Before we head out, so I don’t forget, here’s the thing. This is a college campus, which means there are rules. Big things: no weapons and no turning unless necessary, or when inside my classroom. And Scott, I really need you to be careful of neutrality. There’s too much shit going on on the campus for me to risk breaking students’ trust by breaking neutrality. Which means you can’t give anyone outside of the pack any instructions, not even something innocuous. I really need to keep their trust so they’ll come to me if they need an ashbreaker or anything else.”

Scott nods. “I’ll do what I can.”

“You need to make sure you do it. If it makes it easier, think of it as my territory.” That’s so so wrong, it’s not his territory, it’s neutral, and he doesn’t hold territory because he’s not a werewolf and not an alpha, but Scott has never really been pack without being alpha, so he might not know how to deal with acting as a werewolf without acting as an alpha. Because before Stiles killed the rogue, Scott essentially had been rogue, and that had its own set of things it fucked with.

Scott looks at him for a solid fifteen seconds, then nods. “Okay. You want us to stay off of campus until tomorrow, or…?”

“No, I mean, come bum around campus if you want. There’s coffee and…” He looks at Lydia, who’s watching him with a weird look on her face. “Coffee,” he finishes, a bit awkwardly. “If you don’t mind sitting around while I run office hours.”

“Nah, that’s fine.”

They each put a few dollars on the table for a tip then head out because he and Lydia really do need to get to campus. They need to break off once they get to the parking lot to go to their individual cars—Stiles has his, and Allison has hers—but Lydia sticks with him, hooking her arm around his and sidling up close. “Want to tell me what that was about?”

“What what was about?”

She looks at him. “Your little freak out when you told him to think of it as your territory. Good way of dealing with it, by the way.”

Ah, she had noticed that. He shouldn’t really be surprised. “It feels sacrilege telling our alpha to think of a neutral territory as mine. There are just so many things wrong with that.”

“Is it the idea of telling Scott that, or of claiming territory as your own?”

“What are you, my therapist?” But even as he says it, he can’t stop the thought that it’s the territory issue, because the tree thinks he should be alpha, and he doesn’t want to be anything the tree wants him to be. And it’s not like he actually is the alpha of the territory, or thinks he is, or that anyone thinks he is, but the idea is still just so anathema to him that it makes him want to scrub his tongue with steel wool to get the words out.

She pats his arm. “Think we can just lock the three of them in a room together until they get over themselves?”

“He does have a girlfriend, you know. A girlfriend in our pack.”

“Never let it be said that I’m a good person.” And then she turns to look at the other three. “I’m riding with Stiles because he knows how to get me to my class on time. See you later.”

\--

Evan shows up an hour into his office hours, and he looks, if possible, tenser than when he showed up to get Stiles to ashbreak the dorms. And then he just sits down on Stiles’s couch, hunches his shoulders, and…sits.

Stiles watches him for the first couple of minutes, then goes back to looking over his Werewolf in Pop Culture students’ research proposals. And, oh look, there’s one about D. Hale. And that shouldn’t feel like a punch to his ribs, but it does. Because fuck, he was that kid six months ago, and now he _knows_ , and he lost him, and it sucks, and he doesn’t know what to do. Other than just keep going and hope that Derek decides that he’s willing to talk to him.

When he turns around almost ten minutes later, the werewolf is still there, hand pressed to his face, shoulders almost to his ears. And he still hasn’t said a word, which is honestly concerning.

“Are you okay?”

“The territory feels wrong.”

Oh, Christ. “I can ask my alpha to stay off campus until tomorrow if it’ll make it better.”

Evan shakes his head without looking up. “No, that’s not…” Finally, he meets Stiles’s eye. “You probably can’t feel this, not being a werewolf, but there’s a certain weirdness inherent to living in neutral territory. Everything feels a little bit off-centered, like your center of gravity is back with your alpha, and the thing about werewolves is that we like having someone in charge. With no alphas here, there’s technically no one in charge, and what that means is that, as the president of the WSA, I’m kind of de facto in charge. Which is indescribably uncomfortable. And now that things are going wrong, it’s on me in a way that it’s not supposed to be, because I’m _not alpha_.”

Jesus, that makes Stiles glad to not be a werewolf. Not that he’s not usually glad, but it makes him even gladder, because he wouldn’t be able to deal with that. “Does that make having the alpha here better, then?”

Evan sucks in a breath. “It’s…hard to describe. Because it’s threatening neutrality, even just having him here—the territory wants to shift towards the alpha, and that’s making everything a bit uncomfortable—but…but being near an alpha that isn’t yours, at least when they’re not being antagonistic or controlling, it’s like…it’s like a hand on the back of your neck.”

And Stiles shouldn’t know what he means, but he does. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Nah. I just needed to be not…. I don’t know. Thank you, Professor, for letting me come rant to you. And I’d like to meet your alpha, if you wouldn’t mind. I think it’ll let me connect the feeling to a face.”

“Yeah, of course. I can get him to come now if you want to hang here for a few minutes.” Evan nods, so Stiles pulls out his phone and dials Scott’s number; he would do this over text, but he doesn’t want Evan to think he has anything to hide. “Hey, Scott.”

“What’s up?”

“The head of the Werewolf-Student Association wants to say hi, so can you come over to my office?”

“Yeah, sure.” He says something to Isaac or Allison that’s too low for Stiles to pick up, and then he asks, “You want the rest of the pack, too?”

That would probably overwhelm Evan, who’s already starting to look tense again, so Stiles says, “No, better not. You need the address?”

Scott laughs. “I need to work on my tracking. Give me five minutes, and if I’m not there by then, give me the address.”

“Will do.” Scott hangs up, and Stiles pockets his phone, looking at Evan. “I assume you heard that, but he’ll be here soon.”

Evan nods. “Thank you. And thank you again for ashbreaking.”

Stiles laughs. “Much to my father’s dismay.” When Evan’s eyebrows go up, he says, “My father despaired when I got my official certification, though I had been ‘breaking for years.”

“My father is human,” Evan puts in, “so I know what that feels like.”

Huh. “So you’re bitten?” He would have pegged Evan as born just by the way he acted, by the confidence in his own skin—beyond this own issue of being expected to be pseudo-alpha in a disintegrating neutral territory.

“Nope. I’m like Seamus Finnegan—mom’s a werewolf, dad’s a human. There’s about a sixty-five percent chance of a single-were household having a were kid, so they didn’t really know what they were going to get.” He picks his head up, and a second later there’s a knock on the door. “It’s your alpha.”

“Yeah, come in.”

The door opens, and Scott slips into the room, looking like he’s trying to make himself small. Which doesn’t really work for Scott, because he’s a large fluffy person, but Stiles appreciates the effort.

Evan shoots to his feet, holding a hand out towards Scott, who takes it. “It’s nice to meet you, sir. My name is Evan Cho, sir, from the Errin Pack down in Southern California.”

Scott smiles, shaking his hand briefly before releasing. “Nice to meet you, Evan. And there’s no need to call me sir if you don’t want to. I’ve heard from Stiles that you’ve been dealing with the problems on campus well.”

That’s not quite true, but it’s apparently far enough from a lie that Evan just smiles, his shoulders relaxing, and responds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tada. The pack is here.


	11. Chapter 11

They head out about half an hour after Evan leaves, joining up with Allison and Isaac to sit at a table in the coffee shop. There aren’t any other werewolves in the coffee shop, and the second time he sees a werewolf approach the door only to veer off as soon as they open the door, he knows this isn’t going to work.

“We need to go somewhere else.”

Allison’s eyebrow goes up as she sips her coffee almost defiantly. “What’s wrong with here?”

“Well, for one thing, we’re freaking the werewolf students out by having an alpha and half his pack in here.”

“Shit.” Scott rubs his face in his hand, then grabs his cup and stands. “Okay, let’s go. You want to go running? Your territory’s freaking me out.”

Running’s a good idea, and Stiles can’t afford to get out of shape, especially not now. And it’s not like he doesn’t run a couple times a week, but running with pack is different. It gives him strength, and, more than that, it makes him _run_. Because Scott and Isaac are fast as hell, and Allison has always been faster than him, so he needs to push himself to keep up.

“Sounds good.” He looks at Allison, who’s draining the last of her coffee. “You want to tell Lydia, or should I?”

She nods. “I will.”

“Give her the hotel address,” Scott says, “and tell her to meet us there in three hours.”

They head out to the local forest preserve, stopping off at Stiles’s place in between so they can change into running clothes. Allison has clothes that can be run in in the giant bag she carries around—who knows why, but he stopped questioning her years earlier—and Isaac and Scott borrow some of his stuff. It’s not like they haven’t shared that and more, so he isn’t weirded out by them wearing his clothes.

The preserve has a six mile jogging path, and nobody should be around right now, so they take off, Scott leading with Allison just behind him. Stiles is behind her, with Isaac behind him—protecting the most vulnerable member of the pack, goddamn it, but he doesn’t have the breath or the energy to complain—and they run.

Other than being tied down, running is one of the only ways he can turn his brain off while still being conscious. He doesn’t even like it all that much, because it burns and he’s never going to be the fastest person he’s running with, and it’s boring, but sometimes it’s the only thing that can let him breathe through the thoughts that are always there, beating down his brain, tearing their way out. And he hadn’t realized how much he needed it until now, how loud the thoughts had gotten without Derek there to make everything shut up.

But he doesn’t want to think about Derek right now (his feet tripping, losing their way, and no, no, no), so he forces the thought from his brain, and the danger, and the tree, and everything else, and just runs.

And the thing about running with Scott, with pack, is that he doesn’t need to look where he’s going, because he trusts his alpha not to lead him anywhere that would get him hurt. It’s like submitting, like giving in to—to someone else and feeling safe because the only person you’re vulnerable to is them and you know they’ll keep you safe, and so you don’t need to think about it because they’re doing the thinking for you. He can practically run with his eyes closed.

Finally Scott starts to slow, and Stiles slows as well, chest heaving, eyes finally focusing enough so he can make out what’s around them. If he remembers right, they’re about a mile from the exit of the preserve, and yeah, maybe he’s run this path too many times, hoping to make everything go away so he could forget the goddamn tree and the goddamn dead bodies for a little bit.

“Hey,” Isaac says, and goddamn him, he’s not even out of breath, “turn the anxiety off. We’re having a nice run.”

“Fuck you,” he manages to gasp out between heaving breaths because goddamn, werewolves are fast even when they’re not running at top speed.

Isaac snorts. “Nah, not my type. Seriously. I’ll hold your hand if it makes you feel better.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” he gasps out again, “ _you_.” But he feels better now, the instinctive adrenaline-fading panic melting away. “Scott, mile to go.”

Ahead of him, Scott nods. “Can you do another half mile, this speed?”

He gets out an affirmation, and in front of him, he hears Allison doing the same. And they keep running, Scott keeping pace like he has a cruise control, and Stiles keeps his eyes fixed on the back of Allison’s shirt, soaked through with sweat, and tries really hard not to think.

By the time they get back to the main entrance, he and Allison are dripping sweat, though the half-mile walk at the end brought his heartrate down to a reasonable level. His averages a bit high, usually over ninety, though his doctors think that’s probably mostly because of his anxiety because he’s in shape and his blood pressure is normal and he has no heart issues (and it’s probably sad that he’s been to enough doctors that he’s gotten confirmation on all of those things), and once his friends started being able to hear his heart on a regular basis they spent a while freaking out every time he exercised.

Scott throw an arm over Stiles’s shoulders as they walk the last few feet to his car, and he’s grinning. “You smell better.”

Because that’s not a totally weird thing to say. “You’re luck I’ve been in a pack with you for a while, or I’d be seriously freaked out when you said stuff like that.”

Scott laughs. “Yeah, right. You know more about this shit than I do.”

“That’s true.” Stiles pulls his keys from his pocket, fumbling a little because his hands are still shaking with adrenaline. “God, I’m going to need a minute before I can drive.”

Allison nudges his shoulder. “Getting out of shape, are you?”

“Screw you, we can’t all be Olympic hopefuls.”

She grimaces at him. “Ugh, don’t remind me. I have tryouts soon, and my dad won’t shut up about it.”

“He’s excited?”

“He thinks someone’s going to figure out my real name.” Her scowl grows, and then she visibly shakes the irritation off, pulling her ponytail out only to put it back up. “Whatever. Not going to worry about that now. Want to go crash at the hotel?”

Stiles’s shaking has finally slowed, so he gets into the car, and Scott gets in the passenger’s seat, Allison and Isaac piling in behind them. He turns to look at Scott. “Your call. Where to?”

“Hotel. You need to fucking relax.”

Scott is probably right, and damn, that’s an appealing thought. Because he hasn’t been able to relax in days, not since Derek left to go on that trip.

“Hotel it is.”

\--

Stiles wakes up on Scott’s bed with Isaac almost entirely curled around him, one arm wrapped around Lydia’s waist with his face buried against her back. Scott and Allison are somewhere in the pile, just not touching him, and he can feel the bone-deep contentment that comes from sleeping with pack. Because it’s like something settles inside of him, something that doesn’t even come from being tied up. It’s safety without the vulnerability, it’s peace without the violence coming around the eye of the storm, it’s hope without fear.

This is what he wishes pack could be all the time, but that just isn’t possible in Beacon Hills.

He starts to try to climb over the pile, and Scott groans, “Stop moving,” from somewhere behind Isaac.

He wants to, but, “My class is a morning class, and we need to get up.”

Lydia rolls over just enough to look at him, one eye slitted open. “I don’t, so shut the fuck up.”

Stiles leans down and presses a kiss to her hair, then wriggles out from between her and Isaac, poking Isaac as he goes to wake him up. Isaac opens his eyes, and they’re glowing, but Stiles stopped being afraid of him years ago, so that doesn’t really work anymore.

They manage to get up eventually, Isaac and Scott stumbling out of bed a few minutes later and Isaac finally picking Allison up and setting her down on the floor to get her up. She scowls up at him, then stalks out of the room to what’s technically her hotel room. It’s one thing that had frustrated them when Scott started dating Kira; she insisted that Allison had her own room in the few times they went places. And it made sense in the first few months, or really for the entire time they were in high school, but they didn’t even start dating until the summer after they graduated high school, and she keeps insisting on looking at it in a human way, when it’s a pack thing.

And that’s maybe one of the biggest reasons Lydia—and, though he won’t admit it to anyone, sometimes Stiles—would rather Scott be with Isaac and Allison than with Kira. Because Kira is pack, but when it comes to romantic issues, she sometimes doesn’t know how act like it.

Finally, half an hour later, they all pile into Stiles’s car, and he starts driving towards campus. They stop at a local coffee shop because he doesn’t want to freak out the students again—or, really, even more—and down a collective half-dozen cups of coffee and dozen pastries. And yeah, a disproportionate amount of the coffee is his, but he only eats two of the pastries, so it’s okay.

They get to the class building fifteen minutes before class starts, and Stiles turns to them before they all walk in. “Isaac, you’ve done this before, so you know what’s going to happen, but Scott, here’s the thing: they’re going to freak out. It’s a thing that happens with people who aren’t used to werewolves. Please don’t freak out with them. It won’t go well.”

Scott rolls his eyes. “I know how to deal with people freaking out.”

“When was the last time you changed in front of a hundred eighteen-year-olds?”

“Point.” He nods, and yeah, he should be fine. Not that Stiles thought he wouldn’t be, but he still thought warning him wasn’t a bad idea.

They head inside, and normally someone else would take point, but he’s the only one who knows where the classroom is, so he leads. Which is good, because it means he’s the first one who sees the mountain ash lining the door to his classroom. “Motherfucker.”

Allison stops behind him, a hand on his back so he knows where she is in his blind spot. “I’m assuming this isn’t a normal installation in your classroom.”

“No. _Motherfucker_.” Something hot prickles in his eyes, and fuck, he isn’t going to cry over a line of fucking dirt in front of his fucking classroom. But this is not what is supposed to be happening, not in this school, not here. And he feels like Evan, being forced to be the de facto alpha when he isn’t supposed to be alpha.

But it is what it is, and he needs to calm the fuck down and do what needs to be done. “Okay, I’m going to clean this up and then check the classroom. Can you check the rest of the classrooms in the hall and clear them?”

Scott steps up on the other side of him. “Isn’t there some public safety number that you should call to report this?”

Right. Fuck. “Yeah. Okay, hold on a sec, then, Allison, while I call and report this.”

She nods, looking at Scott. “I’m going to start patrols.”

“Please don’t hurt my students.”

She laughs. “I only hurt people who try to hurt me first.” Which honestly isn’t all that reassuring.

But he can’t worry about that right now, so he pulls out his phone and calls the public safety non-emergency number. They pick up after half a ring, with, “Northern California University Public Safety, what can I do for you?”

Yeah, he’s not really in the mood for niceties at the moment. “This is Professor Stilinski in the Werewolf Studies department. My classroom—Chelsea 115—has a mountain ash line in front of its entrance, as does”—he takes a look around—“a number of other classrooms at least on the first floor.”

There’s a pause that’s a second too long, and then the person, sounding a good deal less chipper, says, “Okay, we’ll get an ashbreaker down there, though it’ll take maybe twenty-five, thirty minutes.”

“No, that’s fine. I am an accredited ashbreaker, and I have another one with me. But you should probably check the rest of the buildings, as well as warning the students.”

“Thank you.” The person sighs. “I know we’re not really supposed to ask this, but are you the one who broke the druid-keyed circle around the fire?”

“Thanks for your help.” And then he hangs up, because if he wanted that announced everywhere he would have announced it himself. “Okay, we need to start clearing these rooms, getting all of this ash gone before students start showing up. Can you get Allison back?”

Scott nods, starting down the hallway in the direction Allison had gone in, and Isaac looks up from where he’s leaning up against the wall, phone in hand. “You want me to do anything?”

“Stand there looking broody. I don’t know.” Stiles looks at the phone, and a really terrible idea hits him. “Complain about this on your Instagram so people start getting upset about the shit going on on campus.”

Isaac blinks at him for a second. “Really? You want me to make this national?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know. Ask Scott. I have work to do.” And then he gets to work, crouching down in front of him classroom door and shoving all of the mountain ash out of the way. It’s not druid-keyed, thank God, or this would take a hell of a lot longer and be a hell of a lot messier. People are going to start trying to get into their classrooms soon, but he needs to clear his classroom first because his alpha and half of his pack is going to be in there. He needs them _safe_.

He sweeps the entire room, checking for more mountain ash, wolfsbane, or anything else that would kill the people he loves. There’s nothing, so he hurries back out into the hallway to start breaking the rest of the lines in front of the other classrooms.

The thing about ashbreaking is that, theoretically, any human can do it. Breaking a regular ash line literally just takes moving the ash out of the way or even just making a hole in the line, which isn’t difficult. But you don’t always know what kind of ash you’re going to find, and the bigger thing about ashbreaking is that, most of the time when it’s laid, there’s someone waiting in the background to set it back up, and more often than not, they will hurt you to put it back. So most people just aren’t willing to deal with that.

And besides, it’s usually better to have a couple of designated people who know how to deal with possible contingencies rather than a mob of people who could get hurt.

People are starting to file into the rooms, though, and they’re done ‘breaking the lines, so he heads back to his classroom, dropping his stuff down on the desk in the front. Isaac and Scott follow in after him, but when Allison stays outside, Stiles looks over at her.

“You can come in, you know?”

She shakes her head, stepping out of the way for another couple of the students to head in. “I’m not—it’s safer for me to stay outside.”

This is probably not a conversation to have through the doorway, so he and Scott head back out into the hallway, stepping out of the way so he doesn’t block the doorway. “What’s up?”

Allison looks around, then lowers her voice, saying, “They’re not going to shoot through me.”

Oh, fuck. “Allison, they’re not—”

She turns towards Scott. “I’m here to keep you and Isaac safe. You too, Stiles. The best way I can do that is to make sure they don’t ash up the room again, and the best way I can do that is by waiting outside the classroom. And like I said, they know better than to shoot me, and so if I’m between you and them, they can’t get to you.”

That’s terrifyingly pragmatic, and sometimes he hates what Beacon Hills did to all of them. But Scott just sighs. “Okay. But only because they’re not going to be shooting at us.”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever gets you to stop arguing.” And then she steps over to right next to the door and leans against the wall, arms crossed. “It’ll be fine. Don’t you have a class to teach?”

He hates this, even though he knows she’s going to be safe—he’s always been too protective of pack, they all are, and it’s come back to bite them—but she’s right, he does have a class to teach, and he’s not going to not-teach because of people trying to stop them. So he heads back into the classroom, Scott following behind him, to a room with almost a hundred students. And Isaac, looking terrified and trying to hide it.

So Stiles plants a smile on his face, walking his usual seat on the desk to look at the class. “Hello, all. Wow, you all actually showed up today. This is like finals-level attendance. And, as I’m sure you’ve noticed—and what I’m sure is the reason you’re here—we have two werewolves here today to show you what a transformation looks like. These are—okay.” The class has started clapping, which is kind of weird, but whatever. Scott looks like his normal chipper self, but Isaac looks kind of like he wants the ground to swallow him up. Which is worse than previous years, but not by much, and he’ll settle once he remembers that he did this every year. Stiles hopes. “These are Scott and Isaac, both from my pack.” He looks at them. “Do the eye thing.”

He’s watching the class instead of his friends, and he can see the moment their eyes start glowing because half the class recoils. Part of it is probably because a lot of them haven’t seen a werewolf outside of TV or porn, but part of it is probably because of Scott.

“Who can tell me what the colors mean?” Cole’s hand shoots up, his eyes still fixed on Isaac, and Stiles waves him down. “Someone other than Cole?”

A girl raises her hand, and when Stiles points to her, she says, “Yellow means he’s a beta. And red means that he’s an alpha, but that doesn’t make sense, because this is neutral territory.”

Cole’s hand shoots up again, and Stiles points at him. “They got permission, and you can bring alphas to neutral territory if it’s okay with the people in the territory and if they don’t try to take the territory. Which they’re not. He’s not. I’m assuming you’re not.”

Scott’s smile grows. “I’m not trying to take your territory. Mine is enough to deal with on its own. Though, to clarify the previous answer, gold really just means any non-alpha who hasn’t killed an innocent. Generally it refers to a beta, like with Isaac, but it can also be an omega who hasn’t killed an innocent.”

Stiles looks out at the class again. “So first we’re going to have some questions—sorry, you guys need to answer questions, I forgot to warn you about that—and then they’re going to turn and you can come up and see up close. The class is going to be fairly short today, so after they turn you’re all welcome to head out. Now…questions?”

Hands shoot up around the room, and Stiles gestures for Scott to pick. He goes with someone near the back, who asks, “Does it hurt to turn? Like regular changes, not the first time. Though, actually, does the first time hurt?”

Scott nods. “Turning regularly doesn’t hurt. It feels more like cracking your knuckles or stretching.”

Isaac laughs, and when they look over at him, he says, “See, for me, I would describe it like breathing deeply, everything expanding inside of you.”

Stiles is tempted to wave his arms around going ‘see folks, even werewolves’ bodies are different’ but that would be weird, so he restrains himself.

“Huh.” Scott stares at Isaac for a second, then looks back out at the crowd. “As for the initial change, it’s caused by a bite, which hurts because, well, being bitten hurts.” He taps his side, the spot where he was bitten, and God, that’s not a good memory. “Most bites are done on the wrist or the arm, both because it’s the easiest place to access and because it hurts a lot less than, say, the ribs. It’s really when it stops hurting that you’ve finished the change into being a werewolf. The first turn after that, it hurts, but more than that, it’s really disconcerting.” He shrugs. “Of course, all of this is coming from a bitten point of view. I can’t speak for born wolves; all of the werewolves in my pack are bitten.”

Not Malia, though, but she doesn’t remember her first change, and she won’t talk about it, so they can’t ask her. And even if they could, the answer wouldn’t necessarily be at all similar.

A dozen hands go up, and Scott calls on another one.

Forty minutes later, the questions die out, ending with Stiles’s always-favorite, “Why do so many werewolves go into porn?”

The correct reaction to that is always, why do so many humans go into porn, but Scott has more self-control than Stiles, thank God. And now that Scott is done giving some vague answer on the commercialization of werewolves, Stiles jumps off of his desk. “Now the two of them are going to turn, and you can come up and see up close. That being said, as I’ve told you before, please don’t scream, throw things, or touch without their permission. You think I’m joking, but I have seen everything, so please just…don’t.”

And with that, he gestures towards Isaac and Scott on either side of him. “Go for it.”

There are gasps so loud he can hear them, and for a second the entire class sits ramrod-straight in their seats, and then Stiles waves his hands. “Come on, up. They’re not going to bite.” Isaac’s foot lashes out, hitting him in the ankle, and he grimaces. “Ow.”

People stand and start streaming down the sides, most of them heading over towards Scott, which Stiles isn’t really surprised about. Alphas are by definition rarer than betas, and they’re also metaphysically more interesting. And it’s just as well, because Scott is a hell of a lot more social—and, really, more personable—than Isaac.

But Cole makes a beeline straight for Isaac, stopping right in front of him and _beaming_. “Hi. I’m, uh—Professor Stilinski told me about you. That you’re Isaac Lahey. That’s really cool.”

A smile crosses Isaac’s face. “You’re Cole?”

Cole starts nodding before it seems to actually register what Isaac said. “How do you—you know my name.”

“Yeah. Nice to meet you. Are you interested in fashion, or…?”

He shakes his head. “No, not really, I don’t think. More like public relations, maybe, or communication, or something like that, but maybe not.”

Isaac looks at the crowd that’s starting to grow, then says, “If you want to talk after I’m done answer questions, I’d be happy to.”

Cole’s face lights up, and he nods, stepping back so other people can get to Isaac. And he’s not going to do it, but Stiles wants to start grinning, too. Isaac rarely connects with people outside of the pack, so even just the fact that he offered of his own volition to talk to the kid is great. And yes, maybe Stiles is a little too invested in Isaac’s wellbeing and mental health, but Isaac really does need it.

But now is not the time, so he just takes his seat on the desk and watches the chaos unfold around him.

The questions last almost half an hour, and by the end of it there are only a few students milling around, including Cole, who looks like he’s about to jump out of his shoes to talk to Isaac again. But people are going to try to get into the classroom soon, so Stiles says, “We need to head out, but you’re welcome to walk with us if you want.”

Cole nods, the smile still lighting up his face, and Stiles grabs his stuff so they can leave. Allison joins up with them as they leave the classroom, and she looks bored as hell. Which serves her right. “Have fun out here?”

She rolls her eyes at him. “I was on my phone, like I would have been if I was in your classroom. Except this way, I don’t feel bad about it.”

“Eh, my students are on their phones all the time. No need to feel bad.”

She shrugs. “Yeah, well, I didn’t use my phone during college.”

“That’s a lie.”

“That is a lie. Whatever.” Allison glances behind them as Scott walks up between the two of them. “Isaac looks happy.”

Scott nods. “Yeah. I think having someone who looks up to him is helping.”

Isaac can definitely hear him, but he’s apparently ignoring them, because Stiles doesn’t hear a snide answer in response. Probably because he’s listening to Cole, who’s prattling on about how cool he is. Which really is nice to hear.

Stiles opens the door to the outside, holding it as Allison and then Scott step out. It looks like Isaac and Cole are too far away for him to hold it without looking awkward, so he lets go, stepping out and hurrying to catch up with Allison and Scott.

And then there’s a cracking noise that he _knows_ and something red and wet spatters across his face as Scott cries out next to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. (Not really.)


	12. Chapter 12

Someone is screaming.

That might be Stiles, but all he can feel on his face is burning, and there’s screaming.

Scott’s face, eyes too big, appears in front of him, bright red spattered through his hair, mouth moving, and Stiles can’t hear a thing beyond the screaming. He lifts a hand to his face, fingers shaking in front of his eye, and it comes away red.

Sound rushes back. “—calm down, Stiles. You have to breathe.”

“Who was hit?”

Scott blinks at him. “We’re okay. It’s okay.”

Stiles tries to see past him, but he’s filling Stiles’s entire view. “ _Who was hit_?”

A hand touches his shoulder, turning him, and he sees Allison in front of him, bright red covering most of her face and hair. “I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s just paint.” She grabs his hand, holding it up to his face. “See, it’s paint.”

“You didn’t know that when they shot it.”

She looks past Stiles to Scott. “I wasn’t going to let you get shot in the head. You won’t recover from that.”

“Neither will you.” Scott pushes past Stiles to get to Allison, and Stiles just stays where he is because he’s not sure he can move. “I’m not losing you.” And then he grabs Allison’s face in his hands and kisses her.

Stiles’s knees decide this would be a good time for him to sit.

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, people are shooting on his campus, paint laced with wolfsbane if he’s smelling it right, and they shot at his alpha. Oh, fuck. He lurches to his feet, towards Scott and Allison. “We need to get inside before they shoot at us again.” When they don’t react fact enough, he shoves at them. “Now is not the fucking time. We need to get out of the—”

Pain smashes into his spine, and he stumbles forward, into them. Scott catches him, wrapping an arm around his waist to drag him the last few feet back into the building. They get the door closed just as another spot of red hits it, cracking the glass.

Isaac is a few feet down the hallway, Cole restraining him, and he breaks free to race over to them. Scott jerks his head towards Allison. “Check her head.”

Isaac moves over to her, and Stiles tries to follow, pain radiating through his back, but Scott’s hands close over his upper arms. “Stiles. Eye contact.” Stiles looks at him, and his eyes are red. “Are you okay?”

Stiles nods. “I’m okay. Allison probably has a concussion. You should check if she has a concussion.”

One of Scott’s hands touches Stiles’s face, turning it. “That’s what Isaac is doing.”

From behind him, Cole’s voice asks, “Are you sure _he_ doesn’t have a concussion?”

Scott’s eyes don’t move away from Stiles’s. “He’s hyperventilating, so he’s not getting enough oxygen to his brain. And he’s on the verge of panicking. Cole, right? Call your public safety emergency number, make sure they know what’s going on and that we need at least one EMT because someone was shot in the head with a paintball gun.”

“Yes sir.”

But that’s all wrong, because this is neutral, and Scott isn’t supposed to give orders in neutral territory. “You’re not supposed to give orders in neutral territory. And I’m not panicking.” Though he’s not sure what he’s feeling. He’s not feeling anything, except the pain in his back and the burning on his face, and he has paint all over his face, and it’s not blood, it’s not blood, it’s not Allison’s blood even though Allison threw herself in front of a bullet, she can’t throw herself in front of a bullet, they can’t lose her, they can’t lose anyone else, not again.

“Whoa, okay.” Scott steps even closer, grabbing the back of Stiles’s neck, and it’s not Derek, but it’s pack, it’s his alpha. “You need to breathe or you’re going to pass out.”

Stiles tries to take in a breath to say that he is breathing, but it doesn’t work quite right, and some distant part of his brain realizes that, huh, he is hyperventilating, which is going to become a problem soon. But the rest of him is disconnected from his body, small inside his skin, muscles pulling away from bone, and everything is cold.

From somewhere, Cole says, “He smells wrong.”

“That’s because he’s in the middle of a panic attack. Stiles, symptoms.”

It is an order. Stiles can follow orders. “Dissociation.”

Scott blinks at him. “Okay. Fuck. Isaac, how is Allison?”

Allison says, “I’m _fine_.”

Isaac says, “She’s going to have a hell of a bruise, and she should get her jaw looked at, but as far as I can tell she doesn’t have a concussion.”

“Okay. I need the two of you to talk to the public safety people when they come, because I need to talk Stiles down.”

“Can do.”

Scott focuses on Stiles again, and he can’t feel much of anything right now, other than cold and disreality. “Stiles? I’m going to put your back against the wall. I want you to put your palms against it and concentrate on what that feels like. Can you do that?”

Stiles nods, or at least he thinks he does, and Scott pushes him pack until he is against the wall. He thinks that hurts, distantly. He puts his palms against the wall behind him. It’s cold. He can hear himself breathing. It’s too fast.

“Tell me what it feels like.”

“Cold.”

Scott’s eyes flare red. “Tell me what it feels like.”

Stiles swallows, feels his throat moving. “There are bumps. A scratch. Part of it is dented in. My back hurts.” He can feel his breathing, suddenly, too fast, too fast, he’s talking too fast, he’s breathing too fast, he can’t breathe, he’s breathing too fast, and oh God, Allison was almost shot, Scott was almost shot, they were done with the HFU but they’re back now and they’re shooting at people. “Oh, fuck. Oh, holy motherfucking—you almost died.”

Scott makes a noise. “I didn’t die. I’m okay. We’re okay. We’re all okay.”

He wants to take his hands off of the wall, to bury his head in his hands so he doesn’t need to see, but his alpha told him to put his arm on the wall, and he doesn’t want to—he shouldn’t—he shouldn’t—

“Can I touch you?”

He needs touch, he needs pack, he needs to know that his pack is still alive, and he nods, and Scott wraps his arms around him and breathes, and somewhere past them Isaac and Allison are talking to public safety, and Stiles doesn’t know if he can talk through the fear in his throat.

\--

“It was the HFU.”

The detective stares suspiciously at Allison, arms crossed across his chest. “How do you know that?”

She shoves her hand against her face, getting some of the last of the wet paint off of it to show to him. “This is an HFU formula for their training paint. Red paint, wolfsbane, and mistletoe. Check it in your lab; they’ll tell you the same thing.”

“Care to share how you know this?”

“Because we’re from Beacon Hills, and we’ve been facing the HFU for as long as we’ve been a pack.” The detective turns to glare at Scott as he steps up behind Allison, touching a hand to the small of her back.

Stiles is hanging back for once, mostly because he isn’t sure if he can answer questions without screaming or freaking the fuck out. His head is still not working right, thank you panic attack, and what he really needs is sugar and some calm. Isaac and Cole are each being interviewed by other people, and hopefully everyone will leave Stiles alone long enough for him to get his head on straight.

The detective uncrosses his arms, making himself a little bit bigger. “Who are you?”

“Scott McCall. I’m their alpha.”

“Right,” the detective drawls, and then he recoils. Scott is showing off. Great. “Right,” he says again, and he sounds a little more agreeable now. “Whose alpha are you?”

“Here? Allison, Stiles, and Isaac.” He gestures over to Isaac, who glances back at him, then goes back to talking to the cop. “If you’re going to be questioning her, I’m going to be there. Otherwise, remember that she was the one who was shot.”

Allison glances over at him. “I’m fine.”

“I’ll believe that once I confirm it myself.” Scott faces the detective again. “Do you have any other questions?”

“Not at the moment, but someone is going to need to interview your other pack member as well.”

Scott looks back at Stiles, and he can see the concern in Scott’s eyes, so he shakes his head. “I’m fine. I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but I’m fine.” Isaac walks over towards them, phone in hand, and Stiles can see the panic buried just below the surface in his eyes. “You okay?”

“It looks like blood and smells like wolfsbane.” His phone buzzes, and he ignores it. “No, I’m not okay.” His phone buzzes again, and again, and he looks at Scott. “This just went national, which means it went international. I need to call my publicist.”

Scott nods, and Isaac turns away, pressing something on his phone and then putting it up to his ear and going off in rapid-fire French.

The detective turns to Stiles. “I need to get your statement, and then you can go.”

The interview doesn’t take too long, mostly because he doesn’t really know what happened, and his ears aren’t good enough to know where the shot came from, and Scott spends the entire time standing just behind his shoulder, hand on Allison’s back.

And halfway through his recitation, he realizes, holy shit, they kissed. Scott kissed Allison, and things are going to go to hell the second they all walk away and work through what happened. But he really just wants to get out of here, so he keeps going, trying not to freak out to hard when he gets to the gunshot, because he really hates guns and shooting and he has spent way too much time being shot at and having his friends be shot at.

He’s definitely not going to sleep tonight.

By the time he’s done, Scott is vibrating next to him and Isaac is off the phone and crowding him on the other side. Which would get on his nerves, but honestly, he needs it right now.

The detective nods to the group of them. “Thank you.” He looks at Allison. “I would recommend you get your head checked out.”

“Thanks.” The detective walks away, and Allison turns to them. “So who wants to call Lydia?”

Right. Fuck. Stiles looks over to see Cole standing off to the side of the hallway, head down, phone up to his ear. “Can you do that? I have to call my dad and then make sure my student is okay.”

She nods, and Scott says, “I need to call Kira and Liam. And Deaton.”

“First,” Isaac says, and they all look at him, “can I post a picture of you guys on Instagram? It’s a—I know it’s a lot to ask, but I need to get ahead of this, and—and it’s more sympathetic.”

They all look at Scott, who sighs. “Doesn’t hurt me.”

Allison nods, and shit, Stiles doesn’t want this. “Can we do it without having my face in it? I still have to teach here, and I just—”

Isaac nods. “Yeah, that’s fine. Just turn so you’re looking at Scott, and—yeah, that’s good, I can see the red but not your face.” Stiles stares at Scott’s shoulder, trying to resist the urge to drop his head down on him and just not do anything. “We’re good. Thanks.”

And now time to call his dad, which is basically going to be the second worst phone call in recent months, after the Pack Alliance attack call. And God, he doesn’t want to do this, but he has to, so he walks over to the wall and just sits down against it, pulling his knees up in front of him. Across the hall, Isaac walks over to Cole, and thank God for him, because Stiles isn’t sure he can have a useful conversation with the kid yet.

He dials his dad’s cell phone number and then leans his head back against the wall and waits.

It rings once, twice, and then his dad says, “Sheriff Stilinski,” and Stiles just…can’t. “Hello? Who—Stiles? If this is a butt-dial, I swear—”

“Please don’t hang up.” And shit, he’s crying, heat and wetness running down his face, and he sounds like a little kid.

“Stiles, what’s going on? Are you okay? Everyone is down there with you, right? Is Scott there? Do you need me to talk to Scott?”

He can’t say it. He can’t make the words come out of his mouth, because his alpha was just almost shot, and he _can’t think about that_ , so he says, “Look up the news. NCU. Or—or Isaac’s Instagram, it should be on Isaac’s Instagram, you should be able to find it there, you should—”

“Okay, Stiles, I’m looking it up. It’s o—tell me that’s not blood.”

“Paint and wolfsbane and mistletoe. I’m okay. We’re okay. But I—they tried to shoot Scott. They tried to shoot Scott.” He’s said it aloud, and now he wants to throw up. “They could have shot my student, they could have shot Isaac, and they tried to shoot Scott, and Allison pushed him out of the way, and goddamn it, I’m not going to have a panic attack again.”

His dad lets out a slow breath. “Breathe, Stiles. I know that you’re okay, and this would probably be a better conversation to have when you’re a little calmer because talking about it doesn’t seem to be helping you. And you’re staying with Scott tonight.”

It’s not a question. It doesn’t need to be a question; they both know it’s true. “I have to go talk to my student, make sure he’s okay.”

“I’ll talk to you later.” And then his dad hangs up, and Stiles drops his phone next to him and puts his head down on his knees. Just for a minute, and then he gets up and heads over to Cole, who’s talking to Isaac.

When he gets there, Isaac looks up at him, his expression darkening. But he doesn’t say anything, which Stiles appreciates. “Hey, Cole. How are you doing?”

Cole looks kind of terrible, gray-pale and drawn, but he smiles. “I’m okay. I’m sorry that we didn’t go help you, but I didn’t want—they were shooting, and I—”

Oh, no, this kid is not allowed to blame himself for keeping himself and Isaac safe. “You did the right thing.” Stiles glances at Isaac. “You mind if I talk to Cole alone for a second?” Isaac seems to be Cole’s idol, and Stiles wants to let him save face in front of him. Isaac nods, touching Cole’s shoulder and then heading back over towards Allison and Scott, and Stiles says, “I want you to listen to me for a second. You are responsible first and foremost for keeping yourself safe. The members of my pack, we’ve been at this for a while, we’ve made the decision to risk ourselves, and believe me, sometimes it’s not the best choice. Once you’re older, once you know what’s going on, you can make that decision for yourself, but for right now, I’m your teacher and a druid-trained accredited ashbreaker and you are my student, and so your priority and mine has to be your safety. So never feel bad for keeping yourself safe. Do you understand?”

Cole nods, and Stiles sees his throat moving like he’s swallowing hard.

“Good. Now that you’ve heard that, I want to say, and I know my alpha agrees with this, thank you for keeping Isaac in here and safe. You’re right—you didn’t know what they were shooting, and so you did the right thing in assuming they were shooting real bullets. If they had been shooting real bullets, holding Isaac back would have saved his life, so thank you from my entire pack for that.”

It takes a second, and then Cole’s face lights up in a smile. “I didn’t really—I didn’t really think about it. I just didn’t want him going out there when they were shooting, and I’m strong enough to stop him.”

“Well, you did the right thing, and the fact that you could react so quickly is really good. Do you want us to walk you somewhere, if you’re not comfortable working around alone?”

Cole shakes his head. “No, they haven’t cleared the campus yet, so we’re all supposed to just stay in here. And Evan said he would come get me and let me crash in his dorm room tonight, because my roommate is human and I didn’t really want to—I don’t really want to be alone, tonight, and the rest of my pack isn’t here, so being with someone who gets it is the best option.”

“That makes sense.” Stiles looks back at his pack and, yep, Scott is talking to Kira. “You mind if I sit with you until my alpha’s done talking to his girlfriend?”

Cole looks over at them then nods. “Yeah, sure.” Stiles sits down against the wall next to Cole, and after a second, Cole sits too. “She pack?”

“Pack but not were.”

“Huh. You seem to have a lot of that.” And then he looks at Stiles, eyes wide. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that my pack is all weres, because the couple of kids who were born human were bitten in once they were legal, so it’s kind of weird for me for a pack to have a lot of permanent non-weres.”

That makes sense, and he knows that they are an unusual pack. “We had some issues with non-consensual and unintentional biting, and so for the humans in my pack, including me, even if at one time we would have considered it, it made it unappealing.” To say the least. He can’t imagine wanting an alpha’s fangs anywhere near him, not even Scott’s. Not after all the damage they’ve done.

“That’s—what happened to the alpha who did the non-consensual biting? Because that—that’s super illegal, and—”

“He’s dead.”

“Good.”

It is good, but it’s also something that Stiles hates, because they were his knives in the rogue, and because it’s never good to celebrate death. “I wish there had been a better option. You should always look for a better option.” Down the hall, Scott finishes his phone call, and now he and Allison are pointedly not looking at each other while looking at each other, while Isaac stands there clearly trying to pretend not be invisible. The three of them are why he did it, and they will never be not worth it.

Suddenly, Cole laughs. “No offense, but your territory sounds really screwed up.”

No kidding. “Packs in which the werewolves are a majority bitten tend to face on average a higher level of violence than packs in which the werewolves are a majority born. Anyway. While you’re here, why don’t you tell me some more about your plan for your paper?”

“Right. That.” Cole glances at his phone, then back at Stiles. “I’m leaning more towards the territory shift topic, mostly just because there’s more research on territory theory and territory shift, especially in terms of the metaphysical connection to and fracturing from territory. Have you, uh, have you heard back from your expert?”

Shit. Right. “He’s having some…personal issues which are making it difficult to get in contact with him. If I can get in touch with him, I will.” And otherwise, he might have better luck trying to put him in touch with Laura. She does owe him, anyway. “So you’re planning on looking at territory theory? Kellerson has some interesting work on that that you might want to check out.”

“Kellerson?” Cole types that into his phone, then checks something else on it. “Ugh, they haven’t cleared the campus yet. I really don’t want to be stuck in here.” He looks at Stiles. “Partly because, and no offense again, you smell like wolfsbane and mistletoe.”

Stiles had actually almost forgotten he had red paint all over his face. “Right. That is one advantage of being a human; I can only smell it if I try.” Allison and Scott are starting to look too antsy to be standing next to each other, so he says, “Okay, I have to go break up some issues. Please let me know if you need to talk.”

Cole nods. “Thanks. I will.”

Stiles smiles at him then climbs to his feet, heading over to his pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this yesterday and today, including part of it while sitting through a live showing of Handel's Messiah (which is just a little bit too much New Testament for my taste), so you're welcome.
> 
> Also, as hellopetals reminded me to tell you, Scott is actually wrong about what hyperventilation is. Stiles is getting too my oxygen (or, rather, expelling too much carbon dioxide), but Scott just makes an assumption.


	13. Chapter 13

Lydia takes one look at Allison once they walk into the hotel, two hours later, and orders her to the shower. Scott heads to his own shower, and Stiles just finds the nearest chair and sits down in it, scrubbing his hand across his face. He still has paint on him, but he just can’t deal with going into a bathroom and trying to get it off right now.

Lydia perches on the arm of the chair, running a hand through his hair, and he closes his eyes. “Where’s Isaac?”

“Allison’s hotel room. He’s talking to his publicist. Again.”

Her hand scratches up and down his scalp, and he fights the urge to start purring. Because he really does need touch right now, needs something to ground him to the world so he doesn’t start to float away. “Do you know why Scott and Allison won’t look at each other?”

He starts to open her eyes, but that’s not happening, so he closes them again. “He kissed her. Well, first, she shoved him out of the way of what she thought was an actual bullet, and then he yelled at her for it, and then he kissed her. My back hurts.”

She tugs on his hair. “Did you get hit there?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, Stiles.” Lydia pushes at his shoulders, moving him forward, and he goes without argument. “Yeah, you have red all over your back. Are you bruised? Why am I asking you that? Of course you’re bruised. Let me see.”

“Let’s go back talking about Allison and Scott instead.”

“Stiles—”

“We had to all stay in that hallway for hours until they found the paintball gun. And they wouldn’t look at each other. They both just kept talking to Isaac and to me and pretending that the other one didn’t exist.”

There’s another tug on his hair. “Stiles.”

Fine. “I was being lazy and didn’t want to take off my shirt.” He leans forward, grabbing his shirt to pull it off, and wow, he’s sore. “Ow.” The shirt gets caught around his face, and he seriously considers just leaving it there, but now that it’s mostly off, he should get the rest of it off too. So he gets it off, and wow, the entire back of his shirt is covered in red paint.

That shirt is getting burned. But for the moment he just drops it down on the other side of the chair, leaning forward so Lydia can look at the bruise.

“Jesus, that looks awful.” She pokes around it, and yep, that feels awful, too. He had been ignoring it, but now that he’s not, shit that hurts. “Want ice?”

“Yeah.”

“Want me to go see if I can find ice?”

That’ll mean her leave him alone. “Not really.”

Lydia sighs. “Okay, but you’re going to need ice at some point.” Her face buries in his shoulder, her hair falling against his back, and he lifts an arm to wrap around her shoulders. “The campus was supposed to be safe. That was the whole point of leaving Beacon Hills, right? We weren’t supposed to do this anymore.”

There’s nothing he can say to that, because it _is_ the reason they left Beacon Hills, and he kept help but feel like none of this would have happened without him. Which is ridiculous, because this has nothing to do with him or with Derek, but things danger just follows him, and it’s always other people who get hurt.

“Not your fault.” She pokes him in the side, and he jerks away. “Seriously, Stiles, this isn’t your fault.”

“Was I saying that out loud?”

Lydia laughs. “No, but you don’t need to. I know you.” Her head lifts off his shoulder. “Something’s vibrating.”

What? Stiles opens his eyes, and, yep, that’s his phone. Which, God, what is it now? He wiggles his phone out of his pocket, trying not to elbow Lydia in the face, and unlocks it, and motherfucker.

1:12 PM Evan Cho to Stiles Stilinski: Hi Prof. Stilinski. Just wanted to tell you Laura Hale asked to come to territory. Said yes (can’t really say no). Will be here within the day.

“Stiles?” He can’t even deal with this right now, so he just shoves his phone at her, and after a second, she laughs. “Of course. You want to tell Scott there’s going to be another alpha in your neutral territory, or should I?”

“I just want to get this shit off my face and then sleep for a month. You can do it.”

“Okay.” Lydia rubs a hand over his shoulder, and then the sound of the shower shuts off. “I never wanted this.” She makes a noise in her throat. “What’s the point in staying human if it just means watching our friends die?”

“They’re still alive.” The door to the bathroom opens, and Scott walks out, shirtless, towel slung around his shoulders. “I’m going to go shower.”

Scott blinks at him. “Why are you shirtless?” He turns to show the bruise on his back, and Scott sucks in a breath. “Jeez. Okay. Do you think, uh, Allison’s face is going to look like that?”

Stiles shrugs, heading over to the bathroom. Right now he’s just exhausted, even though it’s only one in the afternoon, and he just wants to shut his brain off for a while.

He gets two minutes into the shower before the shaking hits, and he sinks down to the ground in the middle of the shower, burying his head in his hands and curling his knees up and just letting the water pour over his head.

He doesn’t want to be alone right now, doesn’t want to think about all the shit that’s going on right now, because it wasn’t supposed to be this way. This isn’t how the semester was supposed to go, because he was finally happy and safe and he had someone who could protect him and he didn’t even need protecting.

And all of that’s gone now because he fucked up, and he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to get it back. Because Derek won’t answer his phone calls or texts, and if Derek didn’t call him after the shooting, he’s not going to.

He’s not even sure if he should go to Derek’s apartment at this point, because what they hell is he going to be able to say that’ll convince Derek to see him if him being involved in a shooting didn’t convince him?

And now he’s going to be stuck dealing with Laura Hale, who probably hates him at this point, and with his luck Peter Hale is going to be here too, and all he wants to do is hide in this shower until everyone goes away and leaves him alone.

Or maybe he can just drown himself in the shower, and then nobody will be able to bother him.

\--

Once he finally drags himself out of the shower and pulls his pants back on—his shirt is still sitting in the hotel room somewhere, and his back really does hurt—everyone is in the hotel room, sprawled around various pieces of furniture or the floor. And, to nobody’s surprise, Allison and Scott are sitting as far away from each other as they possibly can while still being in the same room, Allison in the chair he had been using, Scott on the bed across the room. Isaac is on the floor near Scott’s feet.

Stiles flops down on the bed next to Scott, and holy shit, that hurts. Allison’s face looks kind of awful, too, a bruise forming across most of her cheekbone, and wow, she’s lucky that didn’t hit her in the eye, because that could have done some serious damage.

She sees him looking and grins, wincing slightly. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

“You should see my back.” He looks at Lydia, who’s still perching on the chair arm. “I’m assuming you told them.”

“That Laura Hale is coming here?” Scott says. “Yeah, she told us. We’re going to need to head back soon, then, or at least I am, because it’s not a good idea for both of us to be in neutral territory together. And I’m pissed at her about Derek treating you like shit, so that won’t go well.”

“The Derek thing was my fuckup, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

Scott looks at him for a minute, then nods. “Okay. You going to be okay with the Hale pack here?”

“I think right now my bigger problem is going to be the people shooting at us on campus, so yeah, it’s fine.” He flops down again on the bed, rolling over so the pressure is off the bruise on his back—which he hasn’t looked at yet, and it probably looks like shit. “Can I sleep now? I just want to sleep.”

Scott’s hand touches his shoulder. “You okay?”

Stiles contemplates picking his head up from where it’s smushed into the mattress, but that seems like too much work. “Not really. Everything hurts and things are shitty and I want to whine for a while and then get drunk.” Now he picks his head up just enough to ask, “Who wants to get drunk with me?”

“I would be up for that,” Lydia answers.

Allison laughs. “Ow. Yeah. But maybe we should drink it here, because they’re going to think I’m an abuse victim.”

\--

Stiles wakes up less hungover than he expected, which is not to say not hungover, but he doesn’t feel like he’s about to die, and his mouth doesn’t taste like garbage.

Of course, he apparently sent Derek thirty-seven drunken text-messages, all unanswered, so that kind of makes him want to hide in Scott’s hotel room’s ridiculously large bed and never leave. But that’s not really an option at the moment.

“Are you sure you need to leave?”

Scott stuffs more of his clothes into his duffel bag, grimacing. “I can already feel the strain on the territory, and we’re not even near each other. If Laura Hale is going to be in-territory, I really shouldn’t be.”

Lydia snorts from her spot on the bed. “I was talking to Isaac.”

Isaac grimaces at his phone. “I need to grab my shit from Beacon Hills and then immediately head down to LA before my publicist comes after me himself, so yeah, I need to go. Apparently when you get shot at—even indirectly—it freaks business people out.”

From her spot in the chair, Allison rolls her eyes so forcefully it looks like it hurts, though the way she’s holding her head doesn’t really help with that impression. “Go figure. I’m not going anywhere, though, at least not for a few more days. With Scott gone, the territory should settle a little.”

Yeah, hopefully. Because everything feels out-of-sorts, and not just because of the people shooting at them. Even Stiles can feel it with the little access to the pack-net that he does have, like a bar across his back that’s pulling up at one shoulder and down at the other hip, trying to stretch him in a way his muscles won’t go.

The feeling started a few hours into the lighter end of their determined-to-get-wasted cuddling session, presumably when Laura Hale set foot in the territory, and it hasn’t gotten worse, but it hasn’t gotten better. And if it feels this uncomfortable for him, it must be hell for the wolves in-territory, especially those who aren’t used to their territory—what’s supposed to be their safe haven—being pulled out.

It’s a feeling they’re way too used to.

“Stiles.” Something pokes his shoulder where it’s leaning against Allison’s chair, and huh, that’s probably Allison. “Stiles.”

“What?”

She pokes him in the shoulder again, which, okay, not necessary. “Your phone is buzzing.”

And oh yeah, the phone he has balanced on his knee is vibrating its way towards the edge of his leg, and he grabs it, answering the call coming in. “Hello?”

“Stiles, this is Laura Hale,” and fuck, it’s Laura Hale. Not quite the last person he wants to talk to at the moment, but close. “How are you doing?”

Frustration—why won’t your brother pick up his goddamn phone, or at least acknowledge that I’m still alive and that we technically never formally broke up—makes his voice sharp even as Isaac and Scott both stiffen and Lydia and Allison react to the sudden stillness in the room. “What do you want?”

“As you may have been informed, I am now in your territory. As you are, university-wise, one of the highest ranking pack members in the territory, as well a person involved in the recent incident, it would be helpful if we can meet.”

Oh, Jesus. “What are you here as?”

He thinks he can hear amusement in her voice as she says, “I am here as an alpha of the Pack Alliance and a member of the Council. As all pack members fall under, in non-pack regard, my jurisdiction, the recent violence matters to me.”

So it’s a photo op. And right, Deucalion is openly opposing her, so she needs to look as good as possible so she can say she’s on the side of the werewolves in the country rather than Deucalion. But he can deal with it if it gets people to stop shooting up his damn school. “So you’re not here as the alpha of the Hale Pack?”

“I am always the alpha of the Hale Pack, but now, that is not the capacity that I am operating within for the official part of this visit.”

Stiles really doesn’t want to meet with her, but he also really doesn’t have a choice. “I can meet with you on campus in an hour. It is technically open.” Though it’s a Saturday, so they don’t have classes, which is good, because students aren’t going to want to go to class. And he has no idea how the school is going to deal with that, but he’s planning on running class and offering to walk any student to their next class or their dorm. And posting a video of the lecture online, because he has no intention of making people walk to class if they don’t want to, not when this is going on.

Laura says, “You are welcome to meet with me in one of the conference rooms in my hotel,” which is honestly laughable. Because there is no way he is going to anything but actually neutral territory to meet with Derek’s alpha, not right now.

So he tells her, “Campus or I’m not meeting with you. That’s my offer.” Allison’s tapping him on the shoulder and mouthing ‘I’m going too’, so he adds, “Allison Argent will be there as well, and she’ll be civil, so I’m expecting you to be, too.” Isaac makes a choking sound, quickly muffled by his hand across his mouth, and Stiles grins at him.

Laura laughs. “I’ll keep that in mind. And I’ll tell Peter as well. See you in an hour.” And then she hangs up, and motherfucker, Peter Hale is here, too. His day is now complete.

Isaac is staring at him with wide eyes as he puts his phone back down on his knee. “That was Laura Hale.”

“Yep.”

“You talked back to Laura Hale.”

Which was probably a spectacularly stupid idea. “Yep.” He starts to lever himself to his feet, and wow, yep, his head still hurts. Go figure. “Ow. Okay. Allison, you sure you want to come with me? They really hate you.”

She shrugs. “Wouldn’t be the first time I was in a room full of people who hated me, and it won’t be the last. And I’m not leaving you alone for a…while.”

“But you’ll leave Lydia alone?”

Lydia shoots him a look, but it’s Allison who answers, “Lydia is intelligent enough to not go back to the campus where we were just shot at. I assume I still can’t bring my bow to your campus.”

“You assume right.”

She grimaces. “Any chance I can claim I need it to protect myself as an ashbreaker, or to protect you as an ashbreaker? Can I say I’m your bodyguard or something?”

Stiles laughs. “Not a chance.”

\--

They get to campus a little before an hour later, which is just as well, because Laura and Peter are already there, along with what looks like every news station in California, as well as a half-dozen international ones. Like some Japanese station. What the hell?

The mass doesn’t swarm them when they get out of the car—there are only three non-news cars in the entire parking lot, and he has a feeling one of them is Laura’s rental, assuming she has a rental—but by the time he gets to where Laura is standing with Peter just behind her near a school administrator—oh look, his school’s dean, that’s just fantastic—they’re all shouting questions. None of which he can make out over each other, which is just as well, because he has no intention of answering.

Dr. Hernandez offers a hand for Stiles to shake when he walks up, even though they’ve met before, and also Dr. Hernandez is notoriously leery of the Werewolf Studies program, so much that he’s tried to shuck responsibility for it twice. “Professor Stilinski, thank you for coming. This is Ms.—uh, Alpha Hale from New York City, and her…packmate Peter, and they’re part of the Congressional Werewolf Council, and they were hoping to discuss the recent events with you. And we as a school want you to know and we are looking for the people involved in this attack and will see that they are brought to justice.”

And then he lets go of Stiles’s hand, and wow, that was an incredibly long time to shake hands, and Stiles hopes he never has to do that again. “Thanks. We’ve met.”

“Oh, that’s great. As I was telling Alpha Hale, you can use one of the conference rooms to discuss what you need to discuss, and we will do our best to keep the media from bothering you.” Which probably meant that they wouldn’t try at all, but Stiles wouldn’t expect anything different. “Why don’t I show you the way now.”

They start walking into one of the buildings, the news crews pressing in behind them and being held back, Stiles sees at second glance, by a couple of public safety officers. He never thought he would feel so sorry for public safety.

Dr. Hernandez flees almost as soon as they get to the conference room, which Allison walks into first with a glare at everyone else. Stiles follows, even though he really doesn’t want to have his back to Peter Hale, and then Peter and Laura follow.

Nobody sits.

Allison takes up a position in the corner of the room, arms crossed across her chest, bruise standing out in stark relief across her cheek. Stiles leans against the table, looking at Laura, who stands a few feet away, Peter beside her.

“So,” Stiles says finally, once the silence has stretched out like taffy and started to fracture, “how’s your brother?”

Peter’s eyes glow—and fuck, Derek’s eyes are blue, he keeps forgetting that, but it doesn’t matter now—but Laura just says, “He hasn’t left his apartment in a week and is only turning his phone on every few days, so I have no idea. How is my brother?”

Touché. “He won’t talk to me, so I have no idea. What do you want?”

Laura smiles, a weird little smirk that has too many things behind it for Stiles to read. “First, the pleasantries. Stiles, I apologize for the injury that you have suffered, being affiliated with the Pack Alliance and having Pack Alliance pack members in your territory. We are in your debt, and we have not repaid it well with this.”

Evan must be one of the Pack Alliance pack members, given his alpha, but Stiles isn’t sure who the other ones are. But he probably needs to give some sort of response to that, so he says, “There’s not really much anybody could have done, so it’s forgiven.”

She nods. “Well, then, it is good to see you again, despite the circumstances. I assume the young woman standing in the corner glaring at me is Allison Argent. I am Laura Hale, alpha of the Hale Pack in New York City, and this is my beta Peter. Neither of us will do you harm so long as you do not threaten or harm us first.”

Allison shrugs. “That’s more I can say about most of my family, so good enough for me. And I won’t do anything to you unless you attack me or Stiles first. Though, good luck getting away with the killing of two druid-trained ashbreakers, even in self-defense.”

Peter’s lip rises, showing elongated fangs. “An Argent, an ashbreaker?”

Stiles steps into their line of sight, even though that’s probably a really terrible idea. “She’s a member of my pack. Though, really, Allison?” He looks back at her, and she looks angry-calm. “Please stop trying to antagonize them. I just want to get this over and done with so I can get out of here, and if this turns into a bloodbath, I’m not getting out of here any time soon.”

Allison snorts. “And we can’t have that, can we. Okay, I’ll play ball. Nice to meet you, Alpha Hale, Peter Hale.”

Laura stares at her for another moment, then looks back at Stiles. “Do you know what’s going on? The attack on the Pack Alliance was unexpected but not exactly surprising, but schools—people don’t go after schools, not like this. We see protests, we see nasty signs, but we don’t see burnings or shooting at an alpha with anything, even if it’s just a paint ball.”

Allison still sounds angry when she says, “It’s not just a paint ball. It’s an HFU paint ball containing a mix of wolfsbane and mistletoe. That hits Scott in the face, or Isaac, it could blind them. It slows down their healing, it can make them sick. It’s an effective delivery system for wolfsbane, especially if you can break any skin, and it won’t hurt humans beyond a few bruises. This wasn’t just a demonstration; this was an attack.”

Peter Hale’s entire face shifts, and he snarls, “You would know.”

“I would know. My former association with the HFU has never been a secret to my pack; they’re the ones who got me out of it. If you’re trying to shame me for the family I was born into, don’t bother. Anything you could say to me, I have already said to myself, and worse.”

Stiles wants to look back at her, to check in with her, but it would reveal a weakness in her that she doesn’t need shown. “To answer your question, I don’t know. I don’t know what sparked it now, I don’t know why they’ve suddenly decided to change their tactics.” Why they’ve suddenly decided to shoot at his pack, unless whoever’s operating here doesn’t know about the agreement. Which, now that he’s thinking about it, is a definite possibility. If it’s someone rogue, or even just someone who isn’t answering to HFU central or is going off-script, almost anything could happen. “We don’t even know if they’re operating on the orders of the main HFU command.”

Allison makes a noise behind him. “We’d better hope they are.”

Laura glances past Stiles at her. “Why?”

“Because if they’re not, then HFU central’s going to come down here, and things are about to get a hell of a lot worse. Or worse, if Gerard has lost control of his hunters…”

“Yeah.” He never thought he would want Gerard Argent to be in control of his hunters, but that is a terrifying idea. One of the only reasons the HFU doesn’t turn into open anti-were warfare in the streets is because Gerard keeps them in line. “Look, Laura, I’m going to do my part, I’ll ashbreak what I can, but you being here is just going to make this a bigger target. So no offense, but I don’t want you on my campus.”

Her expression hardens. “It’s not your campus, and the WSA gave me permission.”

And Stiles didn’t push it, but he bets he could. “You really shouldn’t bring those kids in the middle of this. I’m not trying to give you orders, but please keep your appearances on campus to today, and then hold your press conferences or whatever you’re here for somewhere else. If you try to turn us into a staging ground for your press show, this is going to become a bloodbath.”

There’s a moment of silence, and he knows better than to give an alpha orders, but he wants his students and his pack safe. And then she sighs. “I’ll do what I can. It was good to see you again, Stiles.” And then she and Peter sweep out of the room, leaving him with Allison as the door swings shut behind them.


	14. Chapter 14

Laura doesn’t come back to the campus.

In the next few days, there are another dozen dorm ashings, the entire Werewolf Studies department is ashed, and seven effigy-arson threats are made.

So twenty-four hours before his next class, he sends out an email to all of his classes.

_Stiles Stilinski to <w101-all-students>,<wpc-all-students>,<h&w-all-students>:_

_Hi Everyone._

_As you all know, there have been a number of attacks on the werewolf population of the campus, as well as the campus as a whole, in the past couple of weeks. For the moment, campus is still open, though I’m not sure whether it will stay that way._

_I will still be holding class long as campus is open. Being said, you are under no obligation to come to class. For my lecture class students, your notes will continue to be posted on line, as usual. For all of my students, a video recording of the class will be made and posted online within twenty-four hours. I will also be holding extended office-hours as well as Skype office hours by appointment._

_If you would like to come to class but don’t feel safe walking back to your dorm or to your next class afterwards or if you or somebody you know is facing ashings, I am an accredited ashbreaker and will be accompanied by another accredited ashbreaker for most of my classes. If you would like our help, we would be happy to help._

_My accreditation information is attached._

_Sincerely,_

_Stiles Stilinski, PhD_

_Professor, Werewolf Studies_

_Northern California University_

_[accredidation.jpg]_

_[accredidation.pdf]_

Twenty people show up to his Werewolves 101 class, including Cole, who is basically the last person who should be outside of his dorm, given the rest of the shit that’s going on. Allison takes a seat in the back corner of the room, arms crossed across her chest, watching the door, and damn, but Stiles is glad she’s there.

Halfway through the class discussion on intra-pack marriages—hint, don’t date pack, break up, and then date more pack—one of the kids near the back of the room scoffs. “Why would humans ever want to be glow-whores, anyway? They can’t be that much better in bed, if you’re spending all of your time hoping they don’t crush your skull.”

Allison’s half up before Stiles waves her down. And then he gets to his feet from his perch on the desk, because this is not a conversation to have sitting down. “And here with have our first deduction for use of a slur in class. Congratulations. You now have a zero on your participation grade for this class, and you’ve lost ten points off of your final grade.”

The kid—Something Craig, maybe—shoots to his feet. “You can’t do that. You can’t drop my grade that much.”

“Sure can. Check your syllabus.”

“Why the fuck do you care? You a glow-whore too, shacking up with some fanger?”

The correct answer to that is, ‘Not anymore, but thanks for reminding me,’ but he makes himself say, “And now we have our first administrative write-up. Well, technically our first and our second, given that the syllabus say one write-up per slur. And you will continue to get one each for every slur you use in class.” Cole has his lips pressed together, tight, and he’s shaking slightly. And Stiles cannot stand to see him go through even more, not when he’s sitting in this class after everything he’s gone through. “Sometimes the world is a bad place, especially if you aren’t white and straight and cisgender and human. Sometimes people say and do shitty things to you because that’s how they were taught or because that’s what everyone around them is saying or because they’re just bad people. But this is a classroom in a place of learning, and you will not have to deal with that here. So if you are going to talk that way, get the hell out of my classroom.”

The kid keeps staring at him, standing where he is, and apparently he didn’t get the memo. “I’m serious. Get the hell out of my classroom, and don’t come back until you’re ready to talk civilly about other people. Actually, Allison, can you get him out. Without touching, if possible. We’re not supposed to touch students. It’s against the law or something.”

Allison smiles at him from the back of the room, a nasty smile that makes him really glad she’s on his side. “My pleasure.” And then she climbs to her feet and strides down one of the aisles, stopping at the one where he’s sitting. “Come on, up. You really don’t want me to make you.”

He smirks at her; the girl between him and the aisle shrinks down in her seat a little bit, looking like she wants to escape into the desk. “You know what, I think I do.”

To his surprise, Cole is the one who responds. “She’s an Olympic archer. No, you really don’t.”

The kid turns to blink at Cole for a second, then sweeps out of the aisle, pushing past Allison to stomp down the stairs and head out of the classroom. Allison shoots Stiles another smile. “College was never this exciting when I was there.”

Stiles laughs. “That’s because you studied business and spent all of your time in the archery range. Let’s go back to intra-pack marriages.”

\--

There’s another Werewolf-Student Association meeting two days later, and Allison’s not invited. Or, as Evan put it, “We’ll take you as an ashbreaker, but I’d like to at least pretend the campus isn’t under siege.”

Stiles get there half an hour early this time to make sure it doesn’t need to be broken and then to sweep it—twice—to make sure there aren’t any unpleasant surprises. Because he’s not taking any chances, not with these kids, not now. Not when there are arson threats, not when his _alpha_ was shot at. Because that is not acceptable.

He will not lose anyone else, not again.

Evan shows up first, looking like he hasn’t slept in months, which to be fair, is basically how Stiles has felt for days. “Thank you for coming, I appreciate your service, want some coffee?”

It takes Stiles a second, which is impressive, because that’s basically how he usually talks. And then he realizes Evan is holding a Starbucks cup out to him, and he takes it. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Evan takes a long drink of his own coffee. “It has cream and sugar because I wasn’t sure what you liked and because that seemed like a safe bet. How long has it been since you’ve slept? Do you know how long it’s been since I slept? I haven’t slept in like a week.”

Stiles blinks at him, then drinks a sip, and wow, that’s a lot of sugar, even for him. But it’s coffee, so he appreciates it. “I can tell.”

“You can? Huh.” Evan takes another long drink of his drink, which is a venti. “This has three shots in it. That’s a lot of caffeine. Do you know what it’s like to have people want to kill you? It fucking sucks. It’s really hard to sleep when people want to kill you.”

Stiles does know that, and he wishes this kid didn’t. “If you’re going to sleep with a knife under your pillow, only do it if there’s not another person in your bed. Because stab wounds hurt even if you’re a werewolf.”

All of Evan’s jitters stop for a second as he stares wide-eyed at him. “Shit, you’re probably right.” He looks at his coffee, then takes another drink of it. “I should probably just stop sleeping.”

Putting the cup down, Stiles takes a few steps towards him. “Okay, hey, no, that’s a bad idea. I’m not going to tell you vigilance is a bad idea, but you need to be rational with it. Try to get at least six hours of sleep a night, lay off the coffee, and learn to delegate. Give your friends the responsibility and only take the responsibility you can handle. Or you’re going to burn out, and you’re going to burn out fast. You already are burning out.”

Evan blinks at him. “How do you know so much about all of this? I mean, I know you’re an ashbreaker, and I know you’ve studied all of this stuff, but you seem to have a lot more…personal information about it than even most of the werewolf teachers here. Other than Professor Shelser, but he marched in Hellinsberg, so he’s seen some shit.”

Stiles really doesn’t like talking about it, but this kid really needs to hear it. “Beacon Hills has been facing territorial disputes since the pack was formed, starting with a rogue who bit and turned my best friend and alpha. Eventually, I killed him, but not before the town went to hell.”

“You—oh, shit, you’re the Rogue Killer. I thought the Rogue Killer was a myth. Like, the story they tell little kids to keep them from going rogue. The human who wasn’t even a hunter, who killed a rogue to save his town and then disappeared. You’re fucking—you’re the Rogue Killer.”

“Yeah.” Apparently. The only other person who had ever called him that to his face was the HFU, but apparently it was what the rest of the world called him, too. Fantastic. “My point is that I know about things going to hell, and I know about over vigilance. I also know a lot about PTSD and about what happens when you take everything on yourself. Take a breath. Go out with your girlfriend or boyfriend or both if you have one. Have some sex if you want it. Do something that relaxes you. Do your homework. I’m serious, do your homework. You might not want to do it now, but you’re going to feel a hell of a lot better if you accomplish something you care about.”

“I don’t—it all feels so damn pointless. Homework, classes, all that shit, what’s the point when people are trying to kill us? When people are trying to kill me and the people I care about?”

Stiles knows that feeling. “Because there is life outside of the HFU, and after it. And I hate the saying that if you don’t, they win, because fuck that, if you’re alive, they’ve lost. But you need to still be able to breathe at the end of the day, and the way you’re burning yourself out, you’re not going to be able to.”

Evan nods, scrubbing a hand across his mouth. “Yeah, okay. Just—how did you kill the rogue? No offense, but you’re human.”

“I am human. And I’m not going to talk about it.”

“Fair enough.” He nods again. “Yeah, okay, fair enough. Oh, hi, Cole, how’re you doing?”

There are only four of them that time, including the kid who isn’t particularly fond of Stiles, and Stiles really doesn’t want to listen to them talk about the shit that’s been going on, because been there, lived it, and he doesn’t want to live it again. So he puts his headphones in and closes his eyes and doesn’t start paying attention until smoke starts filtering into the room.

He doesn’t notice it at first, just a tickle in the back of his throat, and then one of the werewolves starts coughing, and then another, and he rips his earbuds out of his ears and heads over to the door, where smoke is flooding into the room, thick and gray. And, given the way the rest of the room is hacking away, full of wolfsbane.

The door doesn’t move when he pushes at it, even though the doorknob turns, and shit, somebody has it secured from the outside. “I need—” His throat catches, clicking, and he swallows a cough. “I need one of you to get this door open.” He doesn’t have a scarf on, so he pulls his collar up over his mouth, moving out of the way just as Evan rams it—and rebounds back, falling on his ass five feet back.

Motherfucker, it’s ashed, and he can’t get to it unless they get the door open. Which they can’t do unless he breaks the line, and the room is filling with smoke, and they might actually die.

He’s going to die in a room full of wolfsbane smoke and werewolves, and this is not fucking acceptable.

Fumbling, his fingers feeling like sausage, as Evan and then Cole hit and then rebound against, he unlocks his phone and presses the text message button. Not that he can see anything beyond smoke at this point, gray on white on sickly gray, so thick now he can’t see his hand in front of his face, so he goes from memory, swiping what he thinks is the room number and ‘need help’ to who is hopefully Lydia or Allison.

And then he shoves it back into his pocket, pressing his elbow over his mouth. They need to get rid of the ash, so he sticks his head down near the opening, wiggling his fingers in to try to reach the ash. Heat burns his fingers, light glaring through, and fuck, the fire’s right there. And then another blast of heat hits, and he stumbles back, collar falling from his mouth.

The next breath he takes in is pure smoke, and something goes light and gray in his head. And he can’t breathe through the coughing, and he can’t quite make himself move, even though he thinks his fingers are moving, he thinks his fingers are scrabbling at the ground, but he’s not sure where they are, and there’s nothing in his lungs, there’s nothing in his lungs but smoke, and this is not how he wants to die.

This is not how he wants to die.

Not without saying goodbye to Scott and Lydia and Allison and Isaac and Malia and Liam. Not without saying goodbye to his dad, not before telling his dad that it’s not his fault, it was never his fault, none of it was ever his fault, no matter what happened. Not without going to his mom’s grave one more time, because he hates it there, but it’s the only way to talk to her, and he doesn’t do that nearly enough.

Not without talking to Derek one last time, even if it’s just to say sorry, because Derek deserves to hear that he’s sorry. Derek deserves so much more than all of the shit he went through, and so the least he deserves is an apology.

Not without protecting these kids, too, not by letting them die here with him. If he’s going to die, he’s not going to let them die with him.

But he doesn’t seem to have a choice, lying here, choking on the air around him, dying.

As someone shoves cloth over his mouth and everything goes black, he thinks he hears a roar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TADA!
> 
> Hooray for long flights.


	15. Chapter 15

Stiles fucking hates hospitals.

Not only does he fucking hate hospitals, he has also been in them enough to know the sounds of them, the smells of them, the feel of them, which is why he knows without even opening his eyes that he is in another fucking hospital.

“Stiles?”

Stiles blinks open his eyes, sleep-sticky, to see his dad’s face in his periphery, blurry, not quite focused enough. “What happened?” He sounds like a chain smoker, every syllable scraping out of his throat.

His dad’s hand touches his shoulder. “They set fire to the room you were in and chained the door from the outside, and they ashed underneath the door so nobody could get to it.”

“Dad—”

“There is a _reason_ I told you not to go into ashbreaking. There is a goddamn _reason_ , and you don’t get to _do_ this to yourself. You don’t get to throw yourself away like this, not when your pack needs you, your _family_ needs you.”

Stiles takes in a breath, and it catches in his throat, sending him retching. “‘m sorry. They’re just kids. I couldn’t let them die. They’re just kids.”

“I know.” His dad touches his face. “I know.”

“Are they—”

“They’re okay. All of them. A druid got them squared away, and they’re fine. You’re fine, too, or you’re going to be; they’re treating you for smoke inhalation, and you passed out.”

Stiles tries to swallow, his throat clicking, and his dad puts a cup with a straw up to his list without him even asking. Once he gets enough water, he nods, and his dad takes it away. “How did I—how did I get out?”

Something goes weird in his dad’s face. “You got a text out.”

So Allison, then, because Lydia probably wouldn’t have been able to get the chains off. Nothing against her, she’s just not the most physical of people. She has other strengths. “Where is she?”

His dad blinks at him. “What?”

“I texted Allison, right, and she got us out?”

“Not exactly.”

“Dad—”

“You texted Derek, and he got Lydia to ashbreak. He got you out, carried you to the EMTs. Almost wouldn’t let you go, from what I heard. He’s still out there, or he was half an hour ago. Lydia, too, and Allison. And Scott has some words for you.”

Stiles barely hears everything after ‘still out there’ because holy shit, Derek came for him. He needed Derek, and he asked Derek, and he came for him, and they need to talk, but right now he just wants a fucking hug.

“Can, uh, can you get him? If he’ll come in. I need to—can you get him?”

His dad doesn’t look happy about it, but he gets up, heading out of the room. Stiles plants his hands on the ground and pushes himself up, propping himself up against the pillow behind him, because he’s not going to be laying there like an invalid if Derek comes in to see him.

There’s a minute of nothing, when he tries not to think, tries not to worry that Derek doesn’t want to see him, that Derek is just here out of obligation, that Derek never wants to see him again, and then the door swings open, and Derek pokes his head into the room.

And he looks fucking awful. Ashen, exhausted, a week’s worth of growth on his face, hair sticking up in all directions, and as stupid as it is, there’s nobody Stiles would rather see right now.

“H-hi.” His voice cracks in the middle of the word, which is embarrassing, and he tries to swallow. “Hi. Thank you for—for saving me, and—”

“Stiles.”

“I’m sorry.”

Derek takes a step into the room, closing the door behind him. “Stiles.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry, I’m so sorry I did that to you, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I’m sorry I fucked up, and even if you never forgive me, and I needed to tell you that I’m—”

“ _Stiles_.” Derek takes another few steps towards him, and Stiles’s mouth snaps shut. “Stiles, seriously, stop talking.” Heat burns down his cheeks, and he realizes he’s crying. And he doesn’t give a damn. “We should talk, but we don’t need to do it now. And I owe you an apology as well.”

Stiles scrubs his hand against his face—and yep, he definitely needs to shave—and pulls his knees up because he’s feeling really damn vulnerable right now. Because it’s so damn easy to fuck up, and he doesn’t want to do that, and maybe he shouldn’t just open his mouth at all, but if they don’t talk now, he might not get another chance. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“I shouldn’t have just walked out, and I should have talked to you.” Derek sits down next to him, finally, but he doesn’t touch, and Stiles wants so damn bad just to reach out and grab his hand, but he doesn’t get to do that.

“We should—we should talk. We should talk. I should talk to you.”

A half-smile crosses Derek’s face. “Okay. We’ll talk.”

“You’re humoring me.”

“You look like a porcupine; it’s hard not to humor you.” Derek reaches his hand out, almost touching Stiles’s face, and then, when he’s so close Stiles can feel the heat of his skin, he flinches away, sticking his hand back at his side. And that shouldn’t hurt, but it fucking does. “I’ll be back out there. You should get discharged later today, probably.”

Stiles should just let him go, but he doesn’t—he can’t—he hasn’t felt safe in weeks, and he just wants to feel safe for a little bit before Derek cuts him off officially, and he’s selfish enough to ask for it. “Can you just…stay? For a bit?” Something goes weird in Derek’s expression behind all that facial hair, and Stiles’s heart twists in his chest. “You don’t need to talk or whatever. I just—never mind. It’s stupid. Don’t—don’t worry about it.”

Derek settles back in the chair, crossing his arms across his chest. “I’ll stay. Get some sleep.”

And somehow, miraculously, he does.

\--

By the time he wakes up, Derek is gone, which surprises him not at all, and Allison and Lydia are on one side of his bed, his dad on the other side. Which is not a bad replacement, as replacements go. Pack and family.

Allison’s bruise looks particularly spectacular at this point, all greens and yellows, and Lydia has a smear of soot across her cheek. But they’re both smiling. “You look like hell,” Lydia tells him.

He grins at her. “Gee, thanks. And also thank you.”

Her eyes narrow. “Why didn’t you text me?”

He shrugs, swinging his legs off the edge of the bed and pulling on a pair of sweatpants from his dad; he would like to think Allison and Lydia aren’t watching, but they’re both pack, so whatever, they probably are. “Honestly, I didn’t know who I was texting, and I think Derek was the last person I had texted.” Stiles swallows, his throat catching, then forces himself to ask, “Where is he, anyway?”

His dad glances behind him, then says, “His sister pulled him out about an hour ago, said she had to talk to him. He said—”

“Son of a _bitch_.” Stiles whips around to look at Allison, half tripping over his own feet in the process. She’s staring at her phone, looking furious, but there’s something behind it. Confusion or relief or maybe hope. “What the _fuck_ is he thinking?”

“Language.”

She blinks up at Stiles’s dad, but she doesn’t look like she’s actual seeing him. “I—I have to go. Call Scott.” She stands up, phone still in her hand. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go have a conversation I really don’t want to have.”

And then she walks out of the room.

They all stare at where she walked out for a second because okay, what the fuck, and then Stiles turns back to his dad. “What did he say?”

“What?”

“You were saying Derek said something. What did he say?”

His dad is still looking at the door, and it takes him a second to turn his attention back to Stiles, his head moving faster than his eyes like he wants to keep looking despite needing his attention elsewhere. “Oh. He said he would call you at ten.”

“In the morning?”

“Yes, in the morning.” Which is in about three hours, because he’s been in the hospital overnight, and wow, he really hates hospitals, and being in hospitals, and thinking about hospitals. “You’ve been discharged, so if you’re ready to go…”

“Yeah, we—” Stiles turns around to look at Lydia, who’s staring at her phone. “You have any idea what’s going on?”

She glances up at him. “If I’m reading this right, Scott told Kira he kissed Allison”—Stiles’s dad makes a noise, but yeah, they are past concern about that at the moment—“and then broke up with her.”

Oh, fuck. “I should go check on Allison.”

His dad looks like he wants to argue, but Lydia clearly knows as well as Stiles does how class this all is to falling apart around them. Because if Kira, Scott, and Allison fracture—really fracture, not just the tension that’s been there for years—their pack might not survive it. Because Liam will pick Scott, Malia—God help her—will side with Stiles, and having to choose between Allison and Scott will break Isaac. And the thing is that, years ago, Lydia would have picked Allison and Stiles would have picked Scott and they would have just split, but they’ve both grown up, and pack has to come first.

But if their alpha—this best friend, yes, but their alpha—is the one tearing them apart, he’s not sure what choosing pack means.

So he heads out to find Allison, because the only way to keep this from blowing up in their face is to keep the bomb from being armed.

“—don’t expect anything from you.” Allison sounds pissed even before Stiles rounds the corner to see her pacing back and forth in a small alcove, but there’s hurt there too, and fear. “Go apologize to your—to Kira and beg her to take you back. Tell her it was adrenaline, heat of the moment, pack bonding—don’t you dare tell me that. It’s been years. You’ve been dating her for fucking _years_ , don’t tell me it was anything more than—god _damn_ it, Scott.”

Stiles can’t take this anymore, not when he is literally listening to his pack tear itself apart, so he steps up in front of Allison, holding his hand out. She blinks at him, and there’s so much pain in her eyes he wants to put a fist through something or run until he can’t breathe. But then she holds out the phone to him, and he puts it up to his ear.

“—not like I’ve ever gotten over—”

“Scott.” Scott breaks off so fast Stiles can almost hear him bite his tongue. “Listen to me for a second.”

Scott’s voice goes sharp. “I’m alpha here, and this is none of your business.”

“If you tear this pack apart because you can’t figure out how to keep it in your pants, it is damn well my business. And seriously, Scott, you’re going to say something now that you regret later, so just…stop for a second. Do you love Kira?”

Allison flinches almost exactly in time with Scott in his ear saying, “Yes.”

“Do you love Allison?”

“I—yes.”

Allison stares at him, but he’s not going to repeat the answer while still on the phone with Scott. “Do you love Isaac?”

There’s a long pause, so long Stiles thinks he’s not going to answer. But Scott has almost been braver than the rest of them. “ _He’s_ over me.”

If Scott genuinely thinks that, he’s more oblivious than Stiles thought was possible. “But do _you_ love him?”

“Sometimes. I think. I don’t know. He’s—he’s _Isaac_.”

And that really is the crux of it, isn’t it? Isaac is like a sassy sarcastic small fluffy animal you want to cuddle and protect and take care of—and apparently, in Scott and Allison’s case, fuck. “So here’s the thing—you have three people you love. Kira loves you; she would probably take you back. I can’t make any guarantee as to whether Allison or Isaac would take you back, but when it comes to you, it tends to be both or neither. But whatever you’re going to do, figure it out before you start doing it, because if you tear the pack apart I can’t guarantee who’ll stand with you.”

Scott asks, “Will you?” and sometimes Stiles hates how he’s willing to ask anything. And they always answer.

“Other than my dad, you’re the most important person in my life. But if the pack is disintegrating and I have to side against you to keep it from falling apart, I can’t say that I won’t.”

“Okay.” Scott lets out a shaky breath. “Okay. Thank you. I’ll—can you tell Allison I’m sorry?”

“Yeah. Talk to you later.” Stiles ends the call, then holds the phone out to Allison, who’s staring at him. “Scott says sorry, by the way. I hope I didn’t overstep on anything.”

She shakes her head. “No, I—what’s he going to do?”

“No idea, and it’s not my call.” His throat hurts now, again, like he swallowed half a desert that someone set on fire, and he really needs water. “And I know Scott does dumb shit sometimes, but cut him some slack, please, if you can. Becoming alpha as young as he did, he never learned how to do this right.”

Allison laughs. “Scott’s been making dumb decisions since before he was alpha, and if I couldn’t deal with it I wouldn’t have dated him then.” She grimaces, looking down at her phone, which she’s turning over and over in her hands. “You actually think if he picks us—and I don’t think he will—Isaac will come, too? Like, be with us?”

“I think if Scott asked and Isaac thought he was serious, he would.”

She smiles, but it’s sad. “I miss him, sometimes. Not that he’s not around, but it’s less than before because he hates watching them together more than I do, and…” She grins suddenly. “Well, between the two of them, he’s better in bed. It’s those fingers.”

“That is not information I ever needed to know. Thank you for that.”

“No problem.”

\--

Derek knocks on his apartment door at ten o’clock and twelve seconds (and no, Stiles doesn’t count them, of course not), and Stiles lets him in, stepping back just enough so Derek can walk inside and close the door behind him. And Jesus, he looks good, the shadows gone from under his eyes, the beard shaved to just a little bit of stubble, his eyes bright.

All Stiles wants to do is climb him like a fucking tree.

He clears his throat. “Hi.”

Derek inclines his head. “How’re you doing?”

“Good.” Stiles wants to shove a hand through his hairs, forces his hand down. “Mostly. Yeah. Good. How are you doing?”

“I’m…good.”

Stiles licks his lips, which are suddenly dry, and Derek’s eyes track the movement. “We should probably talk.”

“We should.” Derek takes a step towards him, and suddenly he’s so close Stiles can feel the heat of his body. “We should…talk.”

Stiles isn’t sure who moves first, but Derek’s hands are dragging his shirt up, calluses catching on his skin, and he’s shoving Derek’s shirt up, and they almost get caught on each other, but then Derek pulls Stiles’s arms up to get the shirt off then strips his own shirt off, and they’re on each other, kissing, hands everywhere, Stiles sliding his hand down Derek’s pants before he gets them all the way unzipped, and they end up on the couch, the bruise on his back sending out a flare of pain as it impacts, but he _doesn’t care,_ doesn’t care at all, because this is Derek, Derek’s hands are on his, and if he’s going to lose this the second they’re done he’s going to make this last as long as he can, even if it’s going to kill him when it ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a six hour flight today for an ~1.5 hour flight. I never want to see the inside of an airport again (even though I'm flying again on Friday).
> 
> But it gave me an excuse to finally finish this chapter, so here it is.


	16. Chapter 16

It’s fifteen seconds after the sweat starts to cool that it hits Stiles just what a supremely bad idea that was. Because now he’s underneath Derek, Derek’s hand still pinning his wrists to the couch over his hand, the other hand wrapped around the top of his thigh hard enough that he’s definitely going to have bruises in a couple hours, and he just had sex with his not-really-anymore boyfriend.

And they still need to talk.

So he pulls his wrists away from Derek’s hand, pushing up at Derek’s chest until he lets go of Stiles’s thigh; he rolls out from under him, falling off of the couch and scrambling to his feet as Derek levers up to a sitting position, boxers pushed down his legs, otherwise naked. Which is really distracting, and so is the fact that Stiles is totally naked except for one sock, which he pulls off before finding his jeans—nope, not his jeans, those are his jeans over there, and this is awkward—and pulling them on.

He pulls up the zipper gently and decides to hell with the button, and Derek still hasn’t moved.

Stiles crosses his arms across his chest, feeling cold and a little bit stupid. “We should talk.”

A smug smile grows across Derek’s face. “I thought that was a pretty good chat.”

“That was sex. Good sex, but sex. We need to actually talk, because as far as I know, you’re not my boyfriend anymore, given that you walked out of my apartment and haven’t talked to me in weeks.”

Derek flinches, and Stiles doesn’t feel as gratified as it feels like he should. “You’re angry. I don’t blame you.”

Jesus. “I’m not angry, exactly. I just—seriously, you just walked and then _refused to talk to me_ , and what the hell was I supposed to do then? Show up at your apartment and knock until you hopefully let me in? Call your sister? Your _uncle_? Look, I fucked up, I know, but if you won’t let me _talk to you_ …”

“I know.” Derek scrubs his hand across his face. “Werewolves, when they’re angry—I hurt people, Stiles. I can hurt you. But I can’t—I can’t let myself do that. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I did that.”

“So, what? Every time we argue, you’re just going to lock yourself in your apartment until someone tries to set me on fire? Or, I mean”—he swallows—“that’s assuming you actually want to still date me. Because just because you didn’t let me die or because you don’t want to hurt me doesn’t mean you still want to date me. Which, you know, I get. Not telling you about the fact that I’d spent a….while investigating the attack on your family is a pretty big fuckup.”

“Yeah, it was.” Derek leans his head back on the back of the couch. “Yeah, that’s a really big fuckup, and I’m pissed that you didn’t tell me. Really fucking pissed, still, because what the fuck, Stiles, you had pictures of fucking Ka-Argent. You had pictures of the woman who burned down my house and killed my family and _had sex with me when I was a teenager_ in your bedroom. We were naked in your bedroom, and you had pictures of the worst woman in the world in there.”

Put that way, that sounds really awful. And at least he still didn’t have them on his wall, but he’s not going to say that aloud. “And I’m sorry for that, and I’ll keep being sorry for that for—” For as long as Derek wants him to be. But that sounds bad. “I’m sorry. I don’t—I’ll do whatever you want to make it up to you or—or whatever you want. But if you don’t want to still be together, I need you to tell me. Like seriously, flat-out, tell me, because I can’t do this shit again.”

“I—”

Stiles’s pocket vibrates, and for a second he seriously considers not answering it, but they’re in the middle of something almost as bad as the rogue, and he can’t not answer phone calls. So he pulls it out of his pocket, and shit, it’s Lydia. She knows not to call now unless something is going to hell. “What is it, Lydia?”

“Laura Hale just called a press conference announcing that she will be leading a Congressional investigation of the HFU. She just called Gerard Argent out on live television in a press conference watched by almost a million people.”

Oh fuck. From Derek’s expression, he’s not surprised, though Derek looks more tired than anything else. “Is she staying in-territory?”

Lydia says, “No indication either way,” as Derek shakes his head.

“Derek’s saying no.”

Derek shakes his head again. “She’s going to be just out of territory for the next week, rotating adjacent territories so as not to step on anybody’s toes.”

Fantastic. So she’s going be basically in-territory, but just not screwing with their neutrality. Which is a start, but not good enough. He repeats what Derek said, then asks, “Can you call Scott, tell him what’s going on? Also, don’t mention Kira. Or Allison. Or Isaac. Unless he brings them up. Please.”

“Yeah, will do. Just thought I should tell you first. Because this is about to turn into an absolute shit-show.”

No kidding. “I also think we should probably enact buddy-system protocols again, so if you get a chance, bring that up with Scott.”

“We’re doing that no matter what Scott says.”

“Okay. Look, I have to go.”

“Tell your boyfriend to keep his sister away from our fucking town.”

“I don’t—” He looks at Derek, and he can’t say it aloud. “Tell me if anything else happens. Seriously. Or…text, actually, right now. Please.”

“You planning on having makeup sex? Or hate sex?”

“Um.” Lydia makes a noise. “Shut up. Bye.” He hangs up, sticking his phone down on the pile of stuff on the table, then looks at Derek. Who’s just sitting there, staring at Stiles like he never wants to look at anyone else.

Which is not something people do when they look at him, not except his dad, sometimes, or pack, but none of them want to have sex with him, thank god. So it’s just Derek, and God, Stiles missed him. And they can keep talking about this, or he can do something about it.

So he walks over and sits down on the couch next to Derek, curling up against him, and he’s so warm. And Stiles hasn’t felt warm since all of this goddamn stuff started.

Derek looks at him, then wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him over so he’s leaning against Derek’s side, and they just sit there.

And it’s not fixed, but he’s warm.

\--

After a while, once his arm is asleep from being pressed up against Derek, he turns to look at him. “We probably should finish that chat.”

“I can’t—” Derek sighs. “I can’t hurt you. Which means that, if I’m angry, I’m going to have to walk away.”

“You’ve gotten angry before.”

“Not like that. You don’t know how close I got to killing you.”

His eyes are blue. Stiles keeps forgetting that. He shouldn’t, but he does, and it shouldn’t matter, but sometimes it does. “I still have the chair that Scott shredded the back out of right before the first time he turned. I have some idea. But if we’re going to be a thing, I can’t take weeks of radio silence. I’m worth a little bit more than that. Even I know that.”

Derek winces. “You are worth more than that, and I’m sorry.”

Which isn’t really a solution. “How about we make a deal—if you’re that mad, so mad you think you’ll hurt me, then we talk over the phone. Or text or Skype or whatever, but I won’t play this game again.”

“Okay.” Derek nods. “Okay, I can do that. Now Laura wants to talk to you.”

“I don’t really want to talk to Laura.” Or, well, he wants to yell at her for making this firestorm worse, because the HFU cannot and will not be taken down as long as there is an anti-werewolf sentiment in the country and anti-werewolf rights lobbyists in Washington. So she’s just making things worse, and he kind of hates her for it, even as he admires the idea, because hell yeah, get rid of the HFU.

“Stiles—”

“If I go see your sister, I’m going to yell at her, and I’m not sure if I can keep Allison from insisting on coming. Might be able to because I’m with you and you probably count in the buddy system, but I don’t know.”

Derek’s face tightens at Allison’s name, but he says, “She’s probably going to want to talk to her, too. It’s about the—the HFU. You seem to have a lot of information about them, and I know you’ve had interactions with them, and…please, Stiles. She’s my alpha. Please.”

Oh, God. That’s not something he can really say no to, because alpha is basically the selling point for everything. Putting Derek in a bad spot with his alpha wouldn’t go well. “I’ll do it if she really needs me too, and I’ll even try to play nice. Probably. But not right now, because right now I need to not think about the fucked up mess this territory has become.” What he really wants to do is cuddle with Derek and watch Netflix, but things are weird now, and he doesn’t want to put Derek under pressure to do something he doesn’t want to do.

Derek nods. “Thank you. I, uh, I have to get some writing done. I’ve been writing six thousand words a day and it’s all shit and I have a deadline in a couple weeks, so hopefully I can actually get something done now.”

Stiles’s heart sinks and he pulls away a little, because, well, there goes that plan. “Okay.”

Derek glances at him. “My laptop is in my car. I was going to go work in the coffee shop if, well, if this didn’t go well, and if you’re okay with it, I could—”

“Yeah.” Stiles nods. “If you’re talking about working here, yeah.” He’s missed listening to Derek typing and leaning up against him or giving him blowjobs. He’s missed giving Derek blowjobs. Not that he’s going to try to do that today, even though Derek is still totally naked. And it’s weird much less body-conscious he is now than before the pack, even accounting for the fact that the pack started when he was sixteen. Or, well, fifteen, depending on how it was counted. “But you should probably put clothes on first.”

Derek smirks at him. “You don’t like my ass?”

That’s hilarious. “Your ass is good enough to bite, which I know from experience. But I don’t think the weird guy next door who telecommutes to Homeland Security wants to look at it. And even if he does, I don’t want him looking at it.”

A blink. “Your neighbor telecommutes to Homeland Security? How do you know that?”

“Um. I might have broken into his apartment once while drunk because I decided it would be a good idea to test my lockpicking skills and then couldn’t remember which apartment was mine.”

Derek starts laughing, and it’s the best sound Stiles has heard in a long time. And it makes him want to kiss him, want to suck on that gorgeous lower lip, want the slide of his tongue, but that’ll make the laughing stop, so he just smiles up at him, pressing his lips to Derek’s shoulder.

\--

The population of Stiles’s Werewolves 101 class is down to seven, and Cole is one of them, which frustrates the hell out of him. Because what the hell is a werewolf doing showing up to his class when they’re getting shot at and set on fire and ashed into—and out of—places?

But it’s the first time Stiles has shown up to class in anything even remotely close to a good mood, so he’s not going to bitch the kid out for putting himself in danger for a class where he can get the information online.

What he is going to do is make sure the kid has a safe way to get wherever he’s going after class, because he’ll be damned if he lets him get hurt on Stiles’s watch.

Allison’s with Lydia at the moment, being her buddy—old system, still works, and Stiles spent a while being the odd one out when Allison insisted on protecting on Lydia and Isaac wouldn’t leave Sott’s side and they all believed Stiles when he said he could take care of himself (hint, when they’re going against druids and other such related shit, he can’t take care of himself)—so Stiles just visually checks the windows and door every couple of minutes and celebrates the fact that his hypervigilance never really went away.

Hooray for PTSD that can’t really be treated properly because the trauma is semi-ongoing and keeps returning in different forms. The pack would be a great case study for high rates of PTSD in packs—and, for that matter, so would the Hales, probably—if he ever could bring himself to write it.

But he can get his work done while watching everything.

“Remember, your paper proposals are due by the start of next class, and you need at least four possible sources, at least one of them a primary source and at least one a piece about the theory you want to write about. That only makes up two. And I can count to four, so I expect you to be able to.” The seven of them stare at him, and he gets why they’re not in the mood for humor. “Any questions? No? Okay, you can go.”

They get up, and he gestures for Cole to come over. The werewolf does, backpack over one side, shoulders hunched a little bit like he’s trying to hide. Stiles knows the fear in his eyes, and he hates it. “Yeah?”

“Do you have someone to walk with to get where you’re going?”

He shakes his head. “No. But I’m, uh, it’s okay.”

Hardly. “I’ll walk you there. But first, I actually have a phone call to make, if you’re not in a rush. It has to do with you.”

Cole’s eyes go wide, and he shakes his head. “No, I’m good. I have a few hours before my next class.”

Awesome. Stiles has been putting his off for too long, and he really does owe it to Cole to ask, so he pulls out his phone and dials Derek’s number.

It takes three rings for him to pick up. “Yeah?”

“Hi. You got a sec?”

Stiles can hear Derek’s smile when he says, “For you? Always.”

That makes Stiles’s heart beat a little bit harder in his chest, because God, he really likes Derek. “I have a student who wants to use the Hale pack as a case study in his paper, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk to him about it. In person or on email, and there’s no pressure, though I probably will bug Laura about it if you don’t say yes. Unless you really don’t want me to.”

There’s a pause, so long Stiles thinks he might have fucked up, because that’s kind of a thing he’s been doing recently, and then Derek says, “I’ll talk to him. Might as well talk to someone about it at some point, and Laura’s been telling me I need to open up more. Or whatever.”

“You sure this isn’t going to hurt you? Not that I don’t trust you to take care of yourself, because you’re a grownup who’s been taking care of yourself for a while, but I also don’t want you to hurt yourself for something like this.”

Derek sighs. “I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’ve ever forgotten, and if you trust the person enough to ask me, I trust him enough to answer his questions.”

“Thank you. I’ll put him in touch with you.”

“You do that. Do you not want me to tell him about who I am to you?”

Derek sounds hesitant about their relationship in a way he hasn’t since Stiles first started calling him his boyfriend, and that’s really shitty to hear. “Feel free to tell him. Gotta go. Thank you.”

“Love you.”

Stiles doesn’t bother to stifle his smile, even though he probably looks ridiculous. “Bye.” He pockets his phone, then looks at Cole. “He’ll talk to you.”

Cole smiles. “Thank you. I really appreciate it. Though, and I’m not trying to say that your expert isn’t an expert, but is your expert actually an expert? Now that you’ve gotten him to agree to talk to me.”

“Yeah, he’s an expert. I’m not positive how much he wants to tell you, which is why I haven’t given you more information about him, but I’ll talk to him a bit more before sending you all of his information. Now I’m walking you to wherever you need to go, because I know you can look after yourself, but campus is nuts right now.”

Cole looks like he wants to argue, but then he just nods, sighing. “Okay. Thank you. And thanks for still running class. Half of my professors are just posting stuff online, and it’s a mess.”

“I’m not going to let you guys suffer because I’m scared.”

“So you’re scared?” It would be insulting, but Cole sounds like he wants reassurance that Stiles is scared too, like Stiles is some marker for how to deal with this shit, and that’s…disconcerting.

So Stiles just nods. “Yeah, I’m scared. Most people are at times like this, even if they say they’re not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So things happened.
> 
> (There may be actually written sex in the next chapter or two. And possibly post angsty Cole conversation sex (not sex with Cole, that would be weird) if that's a thing you guys thing you would like. And maybe even if not. I may or may not have no idea where exactly I'm going with this story, so it might just keep getting longer until I finish out how to end this part.)


	17. Chapter 17

“You need to take it.”

Stiles’s hands are tied, bandage stretched between them, and they’re wrapped down his hands so he can’t move his fingers, stiff and tied together, and he’s trapped, they’re trapped, he can’t get out, and he’s screaming, screaming, but he can’t hear himself scream.

stiles stands in front of him, smiling. “You need to take it. I can do it for you if you can’t figure out how. I won’t even blame you for it; you are only human, after all.”

“Let me go,” except he can’t hear his voice, he can’t hear himself, and he’s screaming, he’s tangled, he can’t get free.

“You just need to let it in. Just take a breath and—” His mouth keeps moving, but Stiles can’t hear it, can’t hear anything beyond the rushing in his ears, like the wind through the trees, like the nogitsune whispering in his ear, and then he wrenches himself out of dream and onto the floor, knife clutched in his hand.

His back is prickling, shirt sweat-glued to his skin, vulnerable and cold in the air, and he shoves himself into the corner between the bed and the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, trying to breathe. It feels like there’s a sniper rifle pointed between his shoulder blades, and he pushes back even harder against the wall, trying to make the feeling go away.

It doesn’t.

He doesn’t sleep again that night.

\--

Derek runs his hands down Stiles’s sides, sliding them over to his wrists, and Stiles’s heart picks up, because yes, please, he missed this, and then Derek glances away and lets go, pressing a quick kiss to his lips. A quick chaste kiss, and damn it, that’s so not what he’s looking for.

“You, uh, you look tired.” Derek’s voice is cautious, and he takes a step back, shoving his hands in his pockets. And isn’t that a sign.

Stiles nods. “Yeah, I didn’t sleep well. Are you—are you okay?”

Derek blinks at him. “I’m fine. Why?”

If Derek isn’t going to talk about the fact that he’s basically not going to have anything beyond weirdly chaste vanilla sex with Stiles and then only sometimes touch him, Stiles isn’t either. “Nothing. Never mind. Uh, you want some help finishing up?”

Derek turns back to look at the food, then shakes his head. “Just get out the plates and stuff, I guess, and put them out.”

“Thanks for cooking.”

Derek nods, still half-looking at the food. “No problem. I got some writing done, some actually good writing, so I decided to cook.”

It’s such a weird conversation, the one they’re having, like they’re reading from a script for the first time, and it sucks, and he hates it, and he wants things to be just like normal, but they’re just sitting there picking at the food Derek made. And he wants to just say _what the fuck, why are you treating me like I’m made of glass with one foot out the door_ , but he guesses he’s treating Derek like he’s made of glass, too, because he doesn’t say anything either.

They just sit there and eat, instead, then clean everything up, and Derek doesn’t touch him as much as usual, so Stiles doesn’t know if he’s allowed to touch back, and it’s such a fucking mess, and he doesn’t know what to do. So when Derek asks if he wants to stay over, he makes some bullshit excuse about having to get work done (he could get it done here, and has) and then heads home to go curl up on the floor and not sleep for another night.

Because all he has when he closes his eyes is Allison with red splattered all over her face, except this time it’s blood and she has a hole in her head, and Scott is kissing her and getting blood all over his face, and stiles is standing just past them, smiling.

So yeah, he’s not sleeping.

Hopefully he’ll never sleep again.

Also he’s not really following the buddy system, because if he was he would be with Derek or with Lydia and Allison, but if Derek doesn’t want to be near him he’s not going to put himself through that, and he really doesn’t want to make Allison and Lydia deal with his screaming. Which is probably kind of dumb, because they’ve all dealt with each other’s screaming for years, but god, he just wants to pretend everything is normal.

Like Evan. He’ll take an ashbreaker if it’s offered, he just wants to pretend the campus isn’t under siege.

And the problem is that it is, and Stiles is a mess, and nothing is working right, and things are supposed to be better, but they’re not.

But he’ll survive. He always survives.

And wow, that sounds depressing even as he thinks it, because life isn’t supposed to be just about surviving, but he lived in Beacon Hills for long enough that this is not that unusual for him. They just need to figure out how to get out from under his cloud of the HFU, and then they’ll be done with this mess, and he can go back to teaching without worrying about people trying to set him and his students and his pack on fire.

Fuck, he hates this situation.

\--

Three days later, after another dozen ashings for him to deal with and him and Lydia and a couple other professors having to talk the administrators not to shut the school down and instead to actually catch the damn people who are doing this, he’s done. Because there’s no reason for Derek to be doing this, and if Stiles wants things to change, he actually needs to do it himself.

“What the hell is going on?”

Derek blinks at him, one hand outstretched towards a pan on the other side. “What?”

Stiles waves a hand that, whoops, still has a plate in it, so he puts that down before continuing, “You’re treating me like I’m going to disintegrate if you touch me too hard, and you won’t even hold me down or anything when we’re having sex, and honestly at this point it’s kind of a miracle we’re still having sex at this point, and I don’t get it. Are you just not interested in me anymore, or you don’t want to do the Dom stuff with me anymore, which okay, but you need to tell me. We can’t just keep doing this where I don’t say anything and you don’t touch me, and—”

“Stop.” Stiles stops. “Do you want this?”

“Did I ever say I didn’t—”

Derek takes a step towards him. “Color.”

Right. “Green.”

“Do you trust me to put you down, if I can?”

Stiles hasn’t stopped thinking in a month, except for a few stolen moments with his pack. He would kill to shut down his brain for a while. “Green.”

Derek nods. “Okay. We’re leaving this for later. Turn. We’re walking.”

Stiles turns around, and Derek crowds behind him, a hand on the back of his neck, and Stiles can hear his breath deepening, echoing in the room. And he doesn’t give a damn. Derek pushes a little, grip tightening on the back of his neck, and they walk towards the bedroom. Once there, Derek lets go, and it’s cold and a little bit startling, almost bringing him out of the almost-feeling of safety.

“What are—”

“Apparently you didn’t get the memo; no talking unless I ask for your color or I tell you to. Turn.” Stiles turns around, and Derek is so close, his eyes fixed on Stiles like he doesn’t want to look at anyone else. “Arms up.”

Stiles puts his arms up, and Derek’s hands go his pants button and undoes it, then draws the zipper down, knuckles brushing against him underneath, and he jerks, a while coming from his throat. A smile pulls up one corner of his mouth, but he doesn’t say anything. And Stiles wants to ask why he started with his pants, why he needs to have his hands up, but he’s not allowed to ask, so he doesn’t say anything. Because Derek is in charge. Stiles isn’t in charge. He doesn’t need to be in charge.

Thank fucking God.

His boxers are next, and then his socks, Derek picking up one foot and then the other, one at a time, and then he stands, and Stiles is standing there, arms still up, shirt and flannel still on, aroused as all hell and not even caring because he’s not going to do anything unless Derek tells him to.

Derek reaches out and pulls the flannel off, one arm and then the other, before dropping it on the floor next to everything else. Then he goes for the t-shirt, pulling it off over Stiles’s head. And Stiles is totally naked while Derek is fully dressed, and that’s way hotter than it should be, that vulnerability where he knows he’s safe because it’s _Derek_ , and Derek wouldn’t hurt him no matter what.

“Walk to the bathroom, turn on the shower three-quarters of the way to hot, and wait for me.”

Stiles walks over to the bathroom, turning the shower on and then just standing there. Because he doesn’t need to do anything, he doesn’t need to think about anything, and it’s awesome.

Except he has to think about things because he always has to think about things, because things are going wrong, things are always going wrong, and this is going to go away, too, once he fucks things up again or once Derek remembers just how broken he is, and it’s going to fucking suck again, and he should know better than to get attached to people who aren’t pack because they all go away eventually, and even pack dies, which is why he fights so damn hard to keep pack form being hurt, and it still never works, and he fucking hates it.

“I told you to wait for me, not freak yourself out.” Stiles starts to turn towards the door, towards Derek, but a hand on the center of his back stops him. “No, don’t turn around. Hands behind your back.”

Stiles puts his hands behind his back, and something fastens on them; he pulls at it, just a bit, and it holds with maybe an inch of give between them. His breath catches, and he exhales hard. The hand on his back moves to his neck, and then something fits around his eyes, blocking everything out. And he suddenly feels vulnerable, exposed, and Derek seems to be able to feel it, because he crowds in closer, his heat pressed against Stiles’s back, and Stiles’s fingers brush Derek’s hip.

“Color.”

“G-green.”

Derek’s fingers touch his chin, turning his head, and then there are lips on his, hard, possessive, and he gasps into it, wanting to touch, but his hands are stuck behind his back, and he can’t, he just has to stand there and take it.

And then teeth sink into his lip, a burst of sharp pain. “Mm. Oh God.”

Derek sucks Stiles’s lower lip into his mouth, then pulls away altogether. “You’ve forgotten how to listen, haven’t you? Open your mouth; I’m putting a gag in.”

Stiles stretches his mouth open, and a ball fits into it, dry but getting slippery from the inside of his mouth, and the strap secures behind the back of his head. And everything goes kind of hazy, all of his thoughts draining out, and all he can feel is the press of the blindfold on his face and the ball in his mouth as he presses his teeth in and the binding on his wrists behind his back. And the fall of the water on his face as he’s guided into the shower, heat on his face, on his body, and he’s making noises in his throat that he can’t help.

There are hands on his chest, his back, his cock, and pleasure shoots through him, somehow both distant and overwhelming, and he can hear the noises he’s making, helpless and needy, and he doesn’t care, because it’s Derek, these are sounds Derek wants to hear, and it’s like flying.

He half-surfaces when his stomach lands on the bed, and he tries to…something, but a hand strokes through his hair, and lips press to the back of his neck, his back, and he sinks down into the heat, settles. He doesn’t want to stop flying.

\--

Sometime later, he realizes someone is talking. “—don’t think you realize just how gorgeous you look like this, blissed out, totally down, the only time you really look content. I could watch you like this all day. I wish I could keep you like this sometimes, do my work with you lying there next to me so I can just do what I want to you, and you’ll just take it.”

Stiles rolls his head to the side, he thinks, and says, “Sh’nds goo.”

Derek stops talking, fingers touching Stiles’s cheek. “You in there?”

He tries to move towards Derek, but he can’t really move, and he doesn’t really know where Derek is. “Nn.”

Derek laughs. “You’re going to be sore, so I’m going to do this slowly. Gag first.” He feels Derek’s hands on the back of the head, and the gag slides from his lips, dry air rushing into his mouth. Derek drags the ball across Stiles’s lips, dragging saliva across it. “Now you can look all glossy-lipped for a little longer.” He touches a finger to Stiles’s lips. “Suck on this for me.”

Stiles sucks it in, licking it, dragging it between his teeth, and Derek makes a noise that Stiles loves.

But then he pulls his finger away, which no, not fair. “I shouldn’t let you distract me from taking care of you. I’m going to do your hands next so I can turn you over and give you water, and then I’ll do the blindfold.”

“Nooooo.”

“Still my game.” Derek starts undoing whatever’s securing his wrists, and Stiles wants to whine, but his throat is kind of dry, and he’s being lazy, and it still Derek’s game. “That’s good. Good boy.”

“I wanna stay here forever.”

Derek presses another kiss to his back. “You’ll hurt too much if you do that, and you will need to sleep eventually. Here, move your hands.” Stiles wiggles his fingers, and Derek twines their fingers together. And yep, ow, that hurts, but it’s a good hurt. “You good?”

“Mmhmm. Don’ make me do things.”

“You’re going to have to do things. Here, turn over.” Stiles roles over to his back, flopping his arms down, and one hand lands on Derek’s thigh. Derek puts his hand behind his back, pulling him up to kind of sitting, and Stiles’s hand slides down to Derek’s knee. The lip of a glass is put to his lips, and water is tipped in; he misses some, and it dribbles down his chin because he forgets to actually try to drink it. “You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”

Stiles shakes his head. “Nuh uh.”

“Right.” Derek’s fingers undo the blindfold, and flight streams in even as he squeezes his eyes closed and makes an annoyed whining noise. Because ew, brightness. And also ew, doing things. “Shh. Come on, lay down.” Stiles flops back down on his back, and Derek curls half on top of him, legs thrown around Stiles’s, arm around Stiles’s side, and he feels safe.

Derek presses a kiss to his shoulder. “I love you.”

Stiles thinks he says, “Love you too,” but he might already be asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're welcome.


	18. Chapter 18

“So.” Stiles pokes Derek in the shoulder. “You really okay doing this?”

Derek shoves Stiles’s head away from where he’s doing dishes, getting soapy water all over his face, and he sticks his tongue out at him. Derek rolls his eyes. “I can talk to a kid about stuff. And if I don’t want to talk about something, I won’t.”

Stiles wipes the soap off of his face, smearing it against Derek’s cheek, and Derek grimaces at him, but Stiles can see that he’s laughing. On the inside. Very inside. “I just don’t want you to feel like you were pushed into it because you wanted to make you happy.”

“If I was doing things to make you happy, there are other things I would pick.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

Derek smirks at him, putting the plate he’s washing down. And then he reaches down, gripping Stiles’s hips and _picking him up_ _what the fuck_ so his only choices are to wrap his legs around Derek’s waist or flail around like a moron.

So he picks Derek’s waist, clinging on like a horny koala and wrapping his arms around Derek’s neck to kiss him, sliding his tongue across the seam of Derek’s lips, sucking on his bottom lip, because he really can’t resist. And then he pulls away, leaning back just enough to look at Derek, knowing Derek won’t drop him. Because there are definite advantages to dating a hot studly werewolf.

Like the fact that they don’t turn down challenges. So he grins at him. “That it?”

Derek stares at him for a second, then lets go, dropping his legs back down on the ground, and what the fuck. But then a smile spreads across his face, and it’s so goddamn sexy Stiles wants to never let him go. “It’ll give you something to look forward to, later.”

Stiles shoves at his chest, and Derek doesn’t even pretend to move. “Asshole.”

He shrugs. “Fine, then, you don’t have to look forward to anything. I could just get some work done when I get back. I always have writing to do.”

“ _Asshole_.” Stiles plants a kiss on his lips, then pushes at him again. “I could just wait under your desk for you. After I come back, I’ll just sit there under your desk, bored, probably playing with my phone, until you get back. And then you’ll sit down, and your legs will be on either side of me, and you’ll make me suck you off. Maybe I’m not even allowed to take off your pants; I have to try to do it through them, and you won’t me out until I—”

Derek, pupils blown wide, lurches towards him, shoving his hand in Stiles’s hair and pulling him forward, taking his mouth like it’s _his_ , and yes, this is what Stiles wants, unable to pull away, just having to take it.

And then he pushes him away, hand still tangled in Stiles’s hair so it pulls, sharp points of pain. “Behave, or I won’t let you get yourself off, or me. I have to go, and so do you.”

Ugh. He doesn’t want to go. But they have to, and Derek’s telling him to behave, so he nods, exhaling as the motion pulls harder on his hair. “Yeah. I’ll be good.”

“Yes, you will.” Derek lets go, drying his hands on the side of his shirt. “Okay, I’ll see you later.”

\--

Allison’s staying at Lydia’s apartment (probably in her bed, but Stiles isn’t going to ask, because Lydia hits surprisingly hard), and she’s standing outside when Stiles pulls up, one hand on her bow case. Which is ridiculous. Stiles gets her anger, especially because that’s her shield, but she cannot shoot Laura or Peter Hale.

She pulls open the passenger seat door, dropping in next to him and shoving her bow case into the back of the car. “Onward, Jeeves.”

“You better not be planning on shooting anyone with that.”

She rolls her eyes. “You think I’m going anywhere unarmed with this shit like it is? I’m not going to shoot the Hales, don’t worry, but I’m also not letting you go out there unprotected.

Jesus. Stiles starts driving, not looking at her, because that’s ridiculous. “We’ve had this conversation before; you’re not my bodyguard. You’re not any of our bodyguard, unless you want to count Scott, but I don’t think he does.”

“ _Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger eux-mêmes._ ”

“Christ, Allison, we were sixteen.”

“Seventeen.”

For God’s sake. “We were teenagers, Allison. Even as pack, it’s not your job to stand between me and a bullet, or Scott and a bullet, or Lydia and a bullet. We protect each other; it’s not one way. You don’t need to keep paying for what you once might have done.” Allison is silent for so long he looks over at him; she’s staring out the windshield, hands clenched in her lap, and she doesn’t look like she’s going to answer. Which would be fine, except he really needs her to get it. “I’m serious.”

“I _know_.”

“Do you?”

She scrubs her hand across her face, sighing. “I do get what you’re saying, but…look, I don’t do it for you, or for Scott, or for anyone else in the pack. I’m a selfish bitch, Stiles, you know that. I’ve done the math, and I won’t be able to live with myself if I let one of you die when I could have stopped it. I’m saving myself the heartache.”

“That doesn’t fucking—that doesn’t make sense. Like, what the fuck, Allison?” He brakes so as not to hit the _fucking moron_ driving in front of him, not willing to risk a look at her because apparently the people around them don’t know how to fucking drive. Fucking person from Utah. “You’re worth more than that.”

“Pot, meet kettle. I don’t want to keep talking about this, Stiles, it’s not a therapy session.”

Their pack really is ridiculous. “No, it’s just me trying to keep you alive. We humans have to stick together. And…I’ll drop it, Allison, but they can take a hell of a lot more damage than we can, and if you think Scott can survive your death, or Isaac can, you haven’t been paying attention.”

“Stiles—”

“I’m dropping it.” He pulls off the highway, and look, there’s the hotel. “We’re there, and there’s no way they’re letting you take that into the hotel.”

“I’ll keep it in the car.” She shrugs as he slows down heading into the parking lot. “I have enough knives, anyway.”

If they make it out of this alive, it’ll be a miracle.

A human woman in a pencil skirt and blouse, tablet in hand, approaches them as they step into the hotel lobby, offering her hand to them. “My name is Julia, and I’m Congresswoman Hale’s press secretary. My responsibility is to treat her as a congresswoman, not an alpha, and so that is how I have been requested to address her. You are meeting her under her capability as a congresswoman, so you may address her either as Congresswoman Hale or Alpha Hale, as per your preference. You will be meeting with her in regards to the HFU and the recent attacks that both of you have been the victim of. Do you have any questions?”

Stiles blinks at her. “Do you ever breathe?”

“As little as possible.” She nods to the both of them. “Would you prefer to be referred to as Ashbreaker Stilinski, Dr. Stilinski, or Mr. Stilinski?”

“Uh, Stiles works fine.”

“And you?”

Allison’s lips tighten. “Ashbreaker Agazzi.”

Well, that’s pointed. But Julia just nods again. “Very well. Stiles, Ashbreaker Agazzi, please follow me. You will be meeting with Congresswoman in one of the hotel’s conference rooms.” She pivots and starts walking across the lobby, moving on her heels like they’re sneakers. Like Lydia, actually, and that has always impressed the hell out of Stiles.

Allison puts her hand on the small of his back and keeps it there as they walk, mostly as a reminder that she’s there and a little bit as reassurance that there’s someone watching his blind spot. Because yeah, they’re paranoid as hell, and they all know it. But they have a reason for it.

Laura isn’t in the room when Julia lets them in and then walks away, and if they were all human, it would be an insult, but this way, it’s reassurance. She’s giving them the upper hand, letting them take the lay of the land before coming in, convincing them there are no traps. Which honestly is just polite, given that they’re not only in someone else’s territory—and that was not a fun conversation—they’re in her space.

Two minutes after Stiles takes a seat with Allison standing behind him—and yeah, they really need to have words, _more words_ , about that later, Laura walks in, legal pad of paper in one hand; Stiles stands, because sitting would be awkward.

She takes a seat not at the end of the table—across from him, giving him the same level of power as her, and that’s really getting weird—setting her paper down and smiling at him. “Stiles, good to see you again. I heard that you and my brother have gotten back together.”

“Yeah.” He drops back down in his chair, and Allison’s hand lands on his shoulder. “What do you want to know?”

Laura straightens the legal pad on the table, pulls off the pen hooked on it, and starts.

\--

The meeting takes less time than Stiles thought it would, which is fantastic, because he really doesn’t want to be stuck in a room with Laura and Allison any longer than possible. And it’s not even that he really dislikes Laura as a person, no matter that she is using his school for her own political gains. It’s that she hates Allison, and Allison doesn’t react well to people who hate her, and Stiles really does not want to be stuck in the middle.

So he’s in the apartment—but only for a few minutes—when Derek stalks into the apartment, door slamming behind him, and snaps, “Here. Now.”

Stiles shoots up from where he’s sitting on the couch, heading over to where Derek is standing a couple feet in front of the door, because okay, what the fuck. And Derek looks not happy, but he doesn’t look like he’s going to hurt Stiles, so Stiles is willing to play.

He barely stops in front of Derek when Derek says, “Down.” Stiles drops to his knees, and Derek’s hand clenches in Stiles’s hair, pulling his head forward, and Stiles gets the picture. And he’s all for it, even though he has no idea what the fuck is going on, so he reaches up to undo Derek’s fly, pulling it and his boxers down to reveal Derek’s cock, which is half-hard already.

Derek’s hand drags his head forward, and he takes Derek’s cock into his mouth, licking, sucking, straining forward as Derek’s hand holds him in place. And then Derek starts fucking into his mouth, and Stiles takes it, eyes watering, one hand moving on the root, the other clinging onto Derek’s thigh because he feels off-balance, like he might fall over even with the hand in his hair.

And he loses himself in it, in trying to get Derek off and in taking it, playing with Derek’s balls until Derek growls and reaches down, grabbing that hand and forcing it forward and up so he’s more off-balance, reliant entirely on Derek to stay upright.

And goddamn, he likes this, likes knowing that he’s completely reliant on Derek, that he’s giving Derek what he wants, that he’s useful, and he doesn’t need to think about how he’s helping or what he’s doing, he’s just being fucked and that’s all he needs to do, and he’s breathing though his nose and there’s saliva running down the side of his chin and his mouth tastes like pre-cum and his eyes are watering and it’s fucking fantastic—

“Silver.” Derek’s hands drop away and he stumbles back, cock sliding out of Stiles’s mouth so fast he almost gags on the air, and Stiles blinks up at him, trying to figure out what the hell happened. “Silver. Fuck. Silver. Silver. Fuck.”

Stiles scrambles to his feet, wiping a hand over his mouth and standing a step back, because shit, that’s Derek’s safeword, and he needs to know what the fuck just happened. “Okay. It’s okay. It’s okay, Derek, you need to breathe.”

Derek sucks in a breath. “Silver. Silver.”

Jesus. “Okay, Derek, we stopped. It’s okay, we stopped. Just, uh, can you tell me what’s going on? And it’s okay if you can’t, but I, uh, I really want to know that you’re okay, and you don’t really seem okay right now.” He takes a step towards Derek, who stumbles back a step. Which, yeah, that’s not subtle. But Stiles really needs to make sure that he’s good. “Derek, can you look at me?”

Derek looks up at him, and he looks fucking awful. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Can I touch you?”

Derek flinches. “I hurt you.”

What? “Nope, I’m fine. All good. I was totally good with what was going on, but stopping is fine, too. But do you want to tell me what we stopped?”

“Because I’m a fuckup.” Derek starts rubbing his hands over his arms, which Stiles has seen before because he does it. “Ah, Jesus, I feel dirty. I feel—I’m sorry. I feel dirty. I don’t know how I—I don’t know why you—I need to get me off of myself.”

Stiles knows that feeling, and he’s not sure what brought it on, that he has a feeling it has to do with the conversation with Cole. But he’s not going to ask right now, because that’s not going to go well. “Let’s go shower, then.”

“I can—”

Stiles takes a deep breath. “I love you, Derek, but right now I don’t trust that you’re not going to hurt yourself. So I don’t need to touch you if you don’t want me to, but unless you can promise me you’re not going to try to drown yourself in the shower, I’m going in there with you. And if you can promise me that and you want to be alone, I’ll trust you.”

Derek drags a hand through his hair and doesn’t answer, which yeah, that’s kind of what he thought. He heads towards the bathroom, and he can hear Derek following behind him, which is good. And he really isn’t going to touch him without his permission, because he knows what it’s like to not want touch, to feel like touch makes our skin crawl. It’s a delicate balance, though, because sometimes you want touch and can’t make yourself ask for it, so he’s going to have to keep offering.

He turns on the shower, stripping on his clothes and blessing the fact that Derek has a huge-ass shower so they can both shower simultaneously without touching, if necessary. Derek is standing in the bathroom, staring at nothing in particular and scrubbing his hands together, pants pulled back up but unbuttoned, and that’s going to be a problem.

“Can you undress, or do you want my help?” Derek blinks at him. “Or you can shower with your clothes on, but you probably want to take your shoes off, at least, because those are going to suck to get wet.”

Derek stares at him for another few seconds then starts stripping like his clothes offended him. Stiles strips too, dropping his clothes on the ground, and he was hard before, but not anymore, and neither is Derek, though Stiles can still see the saliva glistening on him. Which he’s not going to comment on.

Derek shuffles into the shower and then picks up a bar of soap and starts scrubbing, hard, against his hands, his arms, his stomach. Stiles steps in behind him, just standing there, not really doing anything, because he’s not really sure what to do right now.

And then, just as suddenly, Derek slumps down against the wall, sliding down to the floor, the soap slipping out of his hand to the ground. Stiles crouches down next to him, keeping a few inches away. “You okay?”

“She’s not supposed to still be able to fuck up my life like this. She killed my family, she made me—I hated being inside her. It was—it was power over me, she always had all the power, I gave it to her, and then she killed my family.”

Oh, Jesus. Derek almost never talks about Kate, not like this. “She hurt you, Derek, so it makes sense that it still bothers you. And you didn’t give it to her; she took it. You haven’t taken anything from me. I’m giving it to you, and I love giving it to you, and I love that you accept it, because it makes me feel safe and it lets me stop thinking for a while. And I know that you won’t hurt me, and that you’ll stop if I ask you to, and that’s how you’re different from her.” Derek’s eyes squeeze close, and Stiles thinks he can see tears running down from the corners of his eyes, but they might just be from the shower. “Can I touch you?”

Derek sucks in a breath. “Please.”

Stiles drops down on the floor of the shower next to Derek, which, ow, his knees, and curls up on top of Derek, resting his head on Derek’s chest. “I love you. You know that, right? I love you.”

“I’m sorry I had to stop.”

Stiles turns his head up to look at Derek, except, hey, still in a shower, that’s a bad idea, so he tucks his head back down again. “That’s what a safeword is for. You get to stop whenever you want or need, just like I do, and it’s totally fine.”

“Stiles—”

“Would you tell me off for safewording?”

Derek laughs, and it vibrates through his chest and into Stiles, and god, that sounds good. “I was going to say I love you.”

“Oh. Okay. Love you too. Can we get off the floor now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's not where I thought this was going to go.
> 
> So there are going to be like 2-3 chapters left in this part. That doesn't mean it's the end of the series; there's just going to be a little bit of a time jump before the next part, and it's a good place to break it up.


	19. Chapter 19

“So.” Stiles claps his hands together, and one of the students (out of the twelve, ha, the number is going back up) starts; he doesn’t call him on having his phone out, because they’ve been going over administrative stuff, and it’s boring as all hell. “Werewolf-human relations. And this time I mean it in the biblical sense. And the romantic sense.” Cole meets his eye, and yep, Derek told him. “So first, we’re going to get all of the laughter and the suggestive stuff out of the way. Yes, sex, some people have it, lots of people enjoy it, America is really Puritanical and doesn’t like to talk about it.”

The snickers run through the room, because that always happens when he brings up sex, and he waits them out, swinging one foot off the edge of the desk. Once the noise dies down, he continues, “As all of you who did the reading know, sex between humans and werewolves was counted as bestiality until 1921 when the law was changed following the end of the Spanish Flu epidemic when it was found that werewolves can’t catch ninety-five percent of human illnesses, with, oddly, the common cold being one of the ones they can catch. Though they almost never do. But following the Spanish Flu epidemic, there was some research done that resulted in the now-disproven idea that children between humans and werewolves will be born human but have a werewolf’s immunity. Anyone know what part of that is wrong?”

Half of the people stick their hands up, including Cole, and Stiles points at one of them, a girl named Helen whose essays always include the word “fundamentally” more than should be possible while still being correct. “All of it. Some children between humans and werewolves are born human, but the ones born human don’t have werewolf immunity.”

“Correct. It is also possible for two werewolf parents to have a human child, though there is between a six and a twelve percent chance of that depending on the hereditary background of the parents. Now what do you think the biggest problem faced by humans in relationships with werewolves is?”

He calls on Alex, who puts their hand down and says, “The strength.”

“Wrong, but good thought. The people who tend to be more afraid of the strength difference—the people who freak out about it more on the news—are men. From what I understand talking to my friends who are women—most of whom could kick my ass—there’s often this fear, or at least this knowledge, that women have when they date men, especially men who are larger than them, that the men can hurt them if they want to. A woman who is five-foot dating a buff man who is six-four, that strength difference is probably comparable to someone like me dating a werewolf. And the difference is that werewolves are taught from basically birth to control their strength, whereas men tend to be usually just taught how to use it. Though any of you are open to disagree with me if you want.”

Nobody raises their hand, so he keeps going. “The biggest problem tends to be the difference between pack culture and human culture. There are a huge number of differences between pack culture and human culture, especially when it comes to how they deal with relationships, but the ones that run into the biggest problems are the casual touch and the sharing, which are connected.

“For those of you who don’t interact with werewolves in packs much—and I’m not talking about porn pack gang bangs, because those really don’t count, and I’m not talking about most werewolves you see here who aren’t with their own pack members—pack is very insular, and very sharing. That is not to say that there is no concept of private property, or of individual choices, or of individual relationships. But there is less of an idea of—it’s difficult to explain to those outside of pack.”

“We don’t—” Everyone looks at Cole, who makes a face, then keeps going. “In a pack, we give each other what we need, especially when it comes to touch. Sharing rooms, sharing beds, it isn’t unusual. Unless you want privacy, which pack will usually give you if you ask for it, there’s not really any need to differentiate.”

“So you all just watch each other bang?”

Stiles is going to chew the person out—what the fuck is his name, Charlie something—but Cole just smiles. “You know, voyeurism isn’t most people’s thing, but I’m pretty fond of it. You want to fuck someone in front of me, I’d be more than happy to watch. Though hopefully they’re better looking than you are.”

Stiles swallows a smile, because go Cole. “Okay, that’s enough. Cole is right, that is how packs work. Casual touch is shared more than anything. The technical term is “tactile comfort”. The colloquial term is “puppy pile”. The pack bond increases the serotonin levels released by physical contact with other pack members, which is a large part of the reason for having such high levels of physical contact. The other thing is that there are no cultural proscriptions on physical contact between men or between men and women who aren’t in a relationship. Contact isn’t assumed to be sexual unless there is context or something explicitly saying that it’s sexual.

“And the thing is that non-pack humans, especially humans in the United States, aren’t raised that way. There’s a desire to see touch as sexual unless proven otherwise, unless it’s between family members or two women, and so non-pack humans will often become jealous because their frame of reference is different.”

Charlie sticks his hand up. “It can’t be that different. I mean, there’s a kind of fundamental way that people work.”

Ugh, humans. And wow, he’s been in a pack too long, if that’s how he’s thinking, but really, ugh, humans. “Okay, we’ll play a little game, and yay, we have time because there aren’t many of us in here. Not yay that there aren’t many of us in here, yay that we have time. Never mind. Okay. So, here’s a question for you: you find your girlfriend or boyfriend—”

“Girlfriend.”

“—girlfriend, okay, in bed with one of your closest male friends, cuddling. First thought?”

“That they’re sleeping together.”

Right. “Cole?”

Cole blinks at him. “What?”

“You find your significant other in bed with your best friend, cuddling. What’s your first thought?”

“Oh. Uh, can I join them? I don’t know. That they’re…I don’t know, there’s not really a thought along with it. I’ve probably seen the two of them cuddling in bed together.”

And this is the problem, because people in packs, especially people who have been packs their entire lives, just don’t think about it. “Would you think that your partner was cheating on you?”

“Are they having sex? Because otherwise, I mean, no.”

“And this right here is the problem run into when humans who aren’t used to a pack date people in a pack. It’s an issue when it comes to dating humans in a pack, too, but only about twenty percent of humans in a pack were raised in-pack, so it’s less likely to become an issue. Someone in-pack, especially someone who was raised in-pack, is going to see no problem with sleeping, often naked, in a bed with someone who they might otherwise be attracted to, because it’s not about sex to them.”

Cole walks up to Stiles at the end of class, scuffing his foot on the ground like an embarrassed kid waiting to be disciplined. Which is kind of ridiculous, seeing as the only person Stiles has ever disciplined in class called him a glow-whore. And picked a spectacularly bad time to do it, given that he wasn’t even having sex with a werewolf at the time.

“Hi.”

Stiles hops down from the desk so he can keep sticking stuff in his bag. He has no idea how he ends up having so much stuff out of his bag every damn class. “Hey. What can I do for you?”

Cole scuffs his foot again. “I just wanted to check to see if, uh, if Derek is okay. He seemed kind of upset when he left, and I, uh, I know I shouldn’t have asked about Katherine Argent, so I just—is he okay?” Ah. Asking about Argent must have been what pushed Derek over the edge into freaking out.

But Stiles isn’t going to tell him that, because the kid looks upset enough already. “Yeah, he’s good. He’s fine. Thank you. I’ll tell him you asked.”

“And, uh, he said that you two are…together.”

“Yeah.”

“So the stuff you said about dating people inside packs…?”

Stiles shakes his head, smiling. “Oh, no, I’m pack enough to know better than to see what humans see.”

“Right.” Cole nods. “Right. Okay, I just wanted to make sure Derek was okay and, uh, can you tell him sorry, if you don’t think it’ll make things worse?”

“Yeah, of course.”

\--

Stiles really hates mountain ash, almost as much as he hates hospitals and guns. All of them have been around when his friends or family died, most of them have contributed to his friends or family dying, and all of them are really goddamn useful when he needs them.

But he is really fucking sick of cleaning up mountain ash from everywhere. From his classrooms, from his school, from his _car_ , like they don’t know that it doesn’t do a goddamn thing to him. Whoever _they_ are. And now he has mountain ash on his hands and so mountain ash in his hair because he keeps shoving his hands through it and mountain ash is on his clothes and it feels like it’s in his fucking shoes, and he wants to never see mountain ash again in his life.

And so all he really wants to do is shower, not have Derek stand in the doorway in front of him and growl.

“Seriously, what the fuck?”

Derek’s lip lifts in a snarl. “You smell like mountain ash.”

“I know I smell like mountain ash. I’ve smelled like mountain ash most days for the past, like, month. Can I shower? Please? Seriously? I want to shower.”

“Why do you smell like mountain ash?”

For fuck’s sake. “Because people keep ashing stuff in the school, and they ashed my car again, which is ridiculous, because I’m human, and yeah, I smell like mountain ash, and I want it off me.”

“I want it off you, too.”

“Great, so we’re agreed, we both want me to no longer have mountain ash on me. Can I come in and shower now?” Derek stares at him for a second, then reaches over and, faster than he can track, leans down and sweeps him up, one hand under his knees, the other under his back. “Okay, what the fuck? Like, hello, yes, big strong werewolf man, but now it’s all over you, too.”

Derek heads towards the bathroom, holding Stiles a little tighter. “I can shower. I don’t want you tracking it all of my floor.”

“And you just want to get me in the shower so you can ravage me.”

“And that.” He sets Stiles down on the floor of the bathroom and strips Stiles’s shirts off, touching his skin as little as possible. “Your clothes smell like mountain ash.”

Stiles kicks off his shoes and starts stripping out of the rest of his clothes, and Derek follows suit. “Yeah, we’ve established that. I’d burn all this shit if it didn’t mean burning half of my clothes.”

“I don’t want you smelling of mountain ash.”

“Established that, too.”

Derek bares his fangs as he leans over to turn on the shower, twisting to avoid touching Stiles as he does so. And honestly, Stiles can’t blame him. He has so much goddamn mountain ash on him, it feels like someone just poured it over his head. “I’m going to scrub all of it off of you.”

“How about I scrub it off of me, and then you can do other things to me. Whatever you want.”

Derek herds him into the shower with an absurd hand movement, like getting chickens to move, and he goes. And then Derek stops and stares at him. “You really don’t have any interest in doing what I do, do you?”

Stiles reaches for the soap, lathers up his hands, and starts scrubbing, looking at Derek as he talks. “Writing?”

Derek snorts, just watching him, standing so his feet are in the spray. “Being in charge.”

“Oh, fuck no. You think I want to tell you what to do? Being in charge, being alpha, that’s basically my worst nightmare. When you’re in charge, I don’t have to think. If I had to be in charge, I would have to think, and I—yeah. Anyway. Can I have the shampoo?”

Derek squirts some shampoo out into Stiles’s hand, and he starts lathering up his hair. And then Derek sets the shampoo down and leans down to _bite Stiles’s nipple, what the fuck_. Shrieking, Stiles jerks back, and Derek reaches out to pin his hands to the wall before he can cover up his chest from any more attacks. “Close your eyes.”

Stiles squints suspiciously at him. “Why?”

“So you don’t get shampoo in them.” Okay, fair point. Stiles squeezes his eyes shut as Derek leans forward, tongue sliding along Stiles’s chest. “I hate you smelling like death.”

“It’s—” Not death, except it is to Derek, right, shit. “I’m sorry. I could have—ah—I could have gone back to my apartment.”

Derek’s mouth moves away from him, and he wants to follow, but Derek’s hands are still pinning him, and with that, he’s not going anywhere. “Nope.”

“‘K—oh, Jesus—kay.” Derek’s teeth close over his hipbone, and his hips jerk forward. Shampoo is running down his face, and he can taste it, and he really doesn’t give a shit. “Christ. I should get covered in mountain ash more often.”

The teeth close down harder, hard enough to actually kind of hurt, but he’s not going to tell Derek that, because it’ll just freak him out. “No, you shouldn’t.”

Right. Probably true. “Can I—can I get you off?” There’s no response, and Stiles wants to open his eyes and check, but he has shampoo all over his face, and that’s not going to end well. “Derek?”

“Beg.”

“Please, please let me get you off. Please let me make you feel better, make you feel good.” The only touch he has is Derek’s hands on his wrists, and it makes him feel wildly like Derek isn’t there, like he’s alone, and he wants to feel Derek, he wants to touch Derek, he wants to be what Derek wants. “Please let me suck you off, let me make you come—”

“You don’t make me do anything. Down.” Derek’s hands move to his shoulders, pushing him down, and he goes, using his hands to brace himself to he doesn’t fall because he still can’t open his eyes. “Hands behind your back.”

Stiles locks his hands behind his back, and Derek’s hand guides his cock into Stiles’s mouth. And it tastes like precum and shampoo, but it’s a heavy weight in his mouth, and it’s _Derek_ , and he loves it.

\--

Stiles curls up, shirtless, against Derek, papers strewn across the table in front of him, and wishes he didn’t have such idiotic students. Or not idiotic, just less willing to be convinced of ridiculous ideas by television. Or porn. Fucking werewolf porn.

“What?”

Stiles blinks over at Derek. “What what?”

Derek doesn’t look away from where he’s typing away at him computer. “You sighed. Twice.”

“My student is citing porn.”

“What’s the paper about?”

Stiles sighs. “Porn.”

“So shouldn’t they be citing porn?”

Stiles shoves at Derek’s side, which does absolutely nothing, because werewolf. Fucking werewolves. “Shut up. Don’t use logic on me. I—”

Something hits him, not quite pain, not quite ecstasy, like a deep breath and Derek’s hand pulling at his hair, and he loses himself for a moment, a breath, a heartbeat, nails dug into his skin and not quite breathing, and he is everywhere and Derek is there and Evan and Cole and werewolves he has never met and they are inside of him and he is inside of them and he won’t—

stiles stands in front of him, on the other side of his table, and he looks disapproving. “You can just take it, you know. Just breathe in.”

Well, that makes him not want to ever breathe again. “I don’t want it.”

“It’s easy territory. Just take it. I’m _giving_ it to you.”

“Why now?”

“Because I can’t do it while you’re sleeping, and you weren’t paying attention. _Take it_.”

“I don’t _want_ it.” He needs to breathe, and Derek isn’t moving, and he needs to _breathe_. And he’s really truly not above begging. “Don’t make me take it. Please don’t make me take it. Please, God, don’t make me take this territory.”

stiles stares at him for another moment, another breath, another heartbeat, mournfully, and then he sighs. “I really wish you would just take it already. You’re so much more interesting than your alpha. He’s too…nice.”

And then he’s gone, and Stiles sucks in a breath, choking on it, doubled over as he tries to _breathe_.

“Stiles. Stiles, are you—”

His phone goes off on the table, and he lunges for it, holding it up to his ear without even checking the ID. “Hello?”

“Please tell me you felt that.”

Evan. Fuck. “What did you feel?” He sounds fucking awful, hoarse, choked off.

Evan sucks in a breath. “Someone just tried to take the territory. It almost forced us—someone just tried to take this territory, neutral territory. Did you feel that? Do humans feel that, pack humans, I don’t know what that feels like.”

Oh, fuck. Right. That would be practically a declaration of war, and motherfucking shit, he hates the Nemeton. “It’s not going to happen again, I promise.”

“Do you know—”

“Evan, breathe. Listen to me. It’s, uh, it’s really complicated, what just happened, and I can’t really explain it because of instructions from my own alpha, but I need you to calm down and understand that it’s not going to happen again. I can promise you that. So can you email everyone on your mailing list, everyone who would have felt that, and tell them it’s not going to happen again?”

Evan audibly sucks in a breath. “How can you know that?”

“I can’t tell you that, I’m sorry.” Derek is starting to look increasingly antsy, so Stiles says, “I have to go,” and then ends the call.

Derek pulls the phone away from him, sticking it on top of a stack of papers and then looking at him. “What’s going on?”

Stiles shoves a hand through his hair. “The Nemeton just tried to give me this territory.”

“Why?”

“It’s magic and it’s bored and I don’t know. I really don’t. And once I have a little bit of time, I’m going to go up there and deal with it again, but…but that shouldn’t happen again. I hope.”

Derek blinks at him. “You’re human. You can’t take territory.”

Stiles _knows_ that. “Yeah, well, it’s trying to give it to me anyway, and if there’s anything that can make me be able to hold territory, it’s that goddamn tree. Now can we stop talking about? I don’t—I want to go bleach my brain out to get it out, but that isn’t possible, so I’m going back to work.”

Derek stares at him for a moment longer, then sighs. “Okay. I hate this, but okay.”

Yeah, don’t they all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so we have one chapter left in this part. And I know it seems like lots of stuff hasn't been wrapped up, but you will see (also it won't end with everything having been wrapped up, but there will be more, just in a different part).


	20. Chapter 20

“Where are we on figuring out who’s calling the shots on the people going after campus?”

Allison groans, shoving her hand through her hair and gesturing towards the phone like Isaac and Scott and the rest of the pack, who aren’t even near each other, can see her. And when neither of them say anything, she groans again. “My dad has some contacts in the grayer parts of the hunter world that he’s been talking to, but so far, nothing. I don’t know what we’re expecting—Gerard’s in charge. Maybe he’s just given up on our immunity.”

“Then why is he going after a school?”

Thank you, Kira, for joining them. But Allison’s feeling pissy—probably frustrated, just like he is, just like they all are—and she snaps, “Maybe because two of our packmates work there, including the one who walked in front of Gerard and told him to screw off.”

“I didn’t actually—”

“It still doesn’t make any sense. If he’s going to go after anyone, why not go after you?”

Stiles leans his head back against Lydia’s bed, groaning. This is devolving quickly, and he really doesn’t want to get in the idle of a pissing match between Kira and Allison, especially when, “You sound like you want him to go after her.” Isaac. Fantastic.

Kira makes a noise over her line. “I don’t want him going after anyone. I’m just saying it doesn’t make any sense. Why are you assuming I have it out for her?”

“Kira—”

“Don’t, Scott.”

Isaac snorts. “Yeah, Scott, don’t.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, can you all _shut up_.” There’s silence across the line, and Stiles sighs. “Okay. I’m going to set up a board in my apartment, because I should have done of that like a month ago, and I’ll keep a feed on it. If you have something you want me to add, email me. We done, Scott, or are we going to keep arguing about who should be being shot at?”

“Yeah, we’re done.” Scott’s—and, by extension, Kira’s, Liam’s, and Malia’s—line clicks off.

Isaac sighs. “Scott needs to pick, or tell us he’s not packing, because this isn’t working.”

Allison pulls her hair up into a ponytail, then pulls it back down again; her nervous tic. “He’s going to pick her; we both know that. I just want this absurdity over with. Lydia, find me a date.”

Lydia sits up from where she’s laying on the floor, legs crossed, dress settled just so. “Do you really want a date?”

Allison groans again. “No. Fuck. I want this to be over to so I can go home—no offense, but I have no idea how you guys live off-territory for stretches this long at a time. Or how Isaac does it, really, that must be hell.”

“Beacon Hills is my home, but it suffocates me.”

Lydia glances at him, then looks at Allison. “See, I just want to be safe, and up until a few weeks ago, this territory was a hell of a lot safer than Beacon Hills.” She touches the scar on her arm from Maria Vasquez’s attack, all those years ago. “I have no interest in watching my friends die a second time. And besides, the buddy system is hard when there aren’t two of us here.”

Stiles exhales, then stands up, stretching. “I’m going to head to Derek’s apartment and then to mine to get a board set up. Call me if you need something, or if Gerard, like, catches fire in front of you or something.”

“If Gerard is in front of me, I’m setting him on fire myself.”

He loves how bloodthirsty Lydia is. “And then you call me.”

She smiles, lowering herself back down to the ground to stare up at him. “Sure. And then I call you.”

\--

Derek is hard at work when Stiles gets back to his place, so Stiles goes to work trying to distract him. It’s a game they play, or at least he plays, doing the most outrageous things he can before Derek snaps. He would do the whole crawling-under-the-desk-and-sucking-him-off thing, but Derek never actually okayed that, and it would be better to do if Derek gives him the order to.

So he starts off by putting his head on Derek’s shoulder, but Derek just ignores him, so he moves to sitting on the edge of the desk and kicking Derek in the shins. Which yields him exactly nothing. Which is unsurprising; Derek is really good at ignoring the hell out of him when he wants to.

He could kneel down next to Derek like some good sub—and he’s read about this stuff, he knows about this stuff, he knows how to be good at it—but he just can’t make himself do it. And he’s not even sure if Derek wants it, wants that stuff, wants to go that far, and he’s kind of afraid of asking. Because if Derek does, Stiles will say no, again, still, because he’ll put himself in that position a little bit, but he won’t do it all the way, no matter that sometimes he wants to.

Because he will let himself be subsumed, because sometimes he doesn’t want to have to be a person, because it’s so much damn easier that way, to not have to make decisions, to not have to know that his actions hurt people. And he needs to be accountable to himself, so he won’t take the easy way out.

So he doesn’t kneel down and lean against Derek’s leg and present himself; he finds a nice open spot on Derek’s (basically empty) desk and lays down on it, legs dangling off of the end. Which doesn’t elicit any response, goddamn it, so he unbuttons and unzips his pants, sliding his hand into his boxers.

“If you keep going, I’m going to tie you down and not let you up.”

Stiles grins and doesn’t move his hand away. “Sounds good to me.”

“I’m busy, Stiles.”

“I could leave.”

Derek still doesn’t look up from his computer, which is honestly kind of demoralizing, considering that he has his dick out and he’s stroking himself. And he knows he’s not the prettiest picture, but considering that Derek is often touching that dick, he’d think he’d be more interested in it.

But Derek does smile. “You think that won’t make me tie you down?”

“I can’t tell if that’s a threat or not anymore.” He slides his hand down his cock, pressure building low in his belly. “You still busy?”

“I’m still busy, Stiles, and you’re still distracting me. Actually.” Derek opens a drawer and pulls out a length of rope which, what the fuck, but also, holy fuck. “Color?”

“Green.”

Derek leans forward and grabs Stiles’s hands, pulling them up and then looping the rope a bunch of times, until Stiles’s hands are in a kind of prayer position, ropes crossing all over his hands. And then he pats Stiles on the chest. “There you go. All tied up.”

“But now I can’t get myself up off.”

Derek snorts. “Go figure.” And then he sits back down and goes back to typing. Which somehow kind of bothers him less than it should, because ha, he got Derek to pay attention to him, and also ha, he got himself tied up. Though he is still out of his boxers and still hard, and he really does want to get off, though he bets just kind of wiggling around isn’t going to get anything done.

So he just lays there, breathing, trying to focus on the feeling of the ropes on his hands instead of the need burning through him, and it’s not enough to get himself to go down, but he doesn’t really care. Just being there, Derek typing away next to him, not thinking about all of the shit going on around him, it’s worth it.

Finally, the typing stops. “Can I ask you something?”

Stiles turns his head to look at Derek, trying to blink out of the slight bleariness. “Course.”

Derek sighs. “I should probably untie you for this.”

Ugh. “But it’s comfy.”

Derek nudges his shoulder, then reaches over to untie Stiles’s hands, coiling the rope around his arm and then slipping it into the drawer. “Come on, sit up.”

“Noooo.”

Derek pokes him in the shoulder. “Come in. I’m not having this conversation with you lying on the desk with your dick out.”

Fair enough, though oddly body-conscious of a werewolf. They tend to be about everything out, all the time. Stiles puts him back to rights and sits up, bracing himself against the head rush, then spins so he’s sitting cross-legged on the desk, which makes him taller than Derek. Ha.

His knee is touch Derek’s laptop, and Derek closes it, which means that this really is serious. And then Derek sighs and asks, “Why did you have that whole investigation of the fire?”

Oh, fuck. That’s not something he ever thought Derek would ask about, and he’s not really ready to answer that. But Derek asked, and he owes it to him to answer. “I started because, uh, because I thought something was wrong with the investigation, something was missing.”

Derek’s eyebrows go up. “Your father’s investigation?”

“No. I’m—I’m sure you know this, but it was a terrorism case, and the feds took it over, the FBI. The way that they said it happened, with Kate Argent doing everything, it never really made sense to me. There was too much that needed to happen, there were too many ways she should have been caught by your family if she had to do everything herself. It always made more sense to have a number of people do it simultaneously, lay down ash and everything, but they could never find evidence of it, and she confessed to everything, so they let it go.”

“And you?”

This always frustrated the hell out of him. “All I have is a lot of evidence there must have been other people, and absolutely no evidence on who did it. She was really good at covering her tracks.”

“She was.” Derek sighs. “Guess she still is.”

Stiles reaches forward to touch his cheek. “She’ll be in jail for the rest of her life. She can’t touch you again.”

“I know.” Derek touches Stiles’s hand. “I know. That was—”

“I have—sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Derek shakes his head, pressing his lips to Stiles’s palm. “No, go ahead.”

“I told my pack I would set up a board to try to figure out the HFU stuff, so I need to head back to my place, deal with that. I’ll probably be there a bit more for the next…while, until we figure this stuff out. Not that I’m not—I’m still coming back here, obviously, assuming you—well, I’m still coming back here, but…anyway.”

“Or, uh…” Derek lets out a breath. “Or you set it up here.”

What? “I’m pretty sure you don’t want an evidence board of stuff about the HFU in the middle of your apartment. Especially because it’s going to be covered in shit about the Argents.”

Derek taps on the table with his free hand. “I, uh—I guess I meant all of it. Your stuff and, uh…well, you spend most of your time here anyway, and I was wondering if you wanted to move everything in here. All of your…everything.”

“All of my everything?”

“Yes, all of your everything.” Derek kisses his hand again. “I’m asking if you want to move in with me. Here. You’re basically living here anyway, and we’re in a stable enough relationship that it makes sense, and otherwise you’re just going to keep running back and forth between here and your apartment.” He smiles. “And you talked about the buddy system.”

Holy shit. Stiles has actually never moved in with anyone. Ever. “You sure you actually want me to move in with you, and have the board and stuff up, and—and you said you were going to need somewhere to go to if you got angry, and—”

Derek reaches out and _picks him up, motherfucking strong werewolves_ , settling him down on Derek’s lap. Stiles loops his arm around Derek’s neck, leaning back just far enough to look him in the face as Derek says, “Yeah, I want you to move in with me. And as for the HFU, if you’re going to be facing them, so will I by definition. I can stand to look at a picture of Gerard Argent if it helps keep you safe.”

Wow. Okay. “It might take a bit of time to move my stuff, and I need to make sure it all fits in your apartment.”

“It should.” Stiles blinks at him. “That’s why I was, uh, looking through your closet that time, when I found that stuff. I was going to ask you then, but it ended up not being the right…time.”

Yeah, no kidding. “So, uh, I guess, yes, I would like to move in with you.”

“Awesome.” Derek leans forward and pecks Stiles on the lips. “Want to get started?”

\--

Stiles is at the point of taking a break from doing work by doing more work, which is kind of frustrating, because nothing is working out for anything, and he doesn’t want to keep reading his students’ papers on porn, because there are _four of them in his goddamn class, goddamn it, he hates the porn industry_. But he also doesn’t want to keep staring at pictures of Gerard Argent’s face, because he’s going to tear it to little tiny eensy weensy shreds and then burn it.

“Why are you pacing?”

Stiles throws his marker at the board, and it rebounds and hits him in the knee. Which is just the fucking icing on the cake. “None of this makes any fucking sense. Nothing has changed that would make Gerard suddenly decide to go after us _now_. Especially having someone shoot at Allison and I—that doesn’t make any sense?”

Derek stops behind him, wrapping his arms around Stiles’s shoulders, and Stiles leans back against the solid warmth of him. “Why wouldn’t he go after you?”

Right, Derek doesn’t know. “We have a, uh, deal with Gerard, or at least we _had one, what the fuck_ , where he doesn’t go after us and we don’t release all of the damning information Allison has about the HFU, including hits that he ordered.”

“Why haven’t you released it, then?”

“Because there’s no way to release it without implicating Allison, too, or at least fucking her over. She might have been a kid when it happened, but she was complicit or accessory after the fact in a few not great things.” Derek stiffens behind him. “It’s not—it really wasn’t her fault, and I know that’s not what you want to hear, but she was a kid who grew up in the life, and it was the only thing she knew, and she got out the second she could. And she’s pack.”

Derek sighs. “I know. I’m probably never going to like her, but I don’t blame her for what Kate did to my family.”

Which is all that Stiles could really ask. “But anyway, Gerard should still be playing by the rules, and I don’t know why he isn’t.” His phone goes off in his pocket, and he really doesn’t want to pick it up, but it’s Lydia, so he pulls one arm just free enough to put it up to his ear. “What’s up?”

“Scott chose.”

Oh, lovely. “Tell me he got back together with Kira.”

She laughs, and fantastic. “Nope. Allison and Isaac. He wants to give it another shot. Allison’s currently off discussing stuff with Isaac in French, because apparently she forgot that I _speak French_.”

Huh. He had forgotten she speaks French, too. “Why do you speak French, anyway?” They all learned Spanish in high school, and Allison had learned it from her family and Isaac had learned it in fashion school, but Lydia’s family doesn’t speak French, as far as he knows.

“I was bored. But that’s not the point. He chose.”

“Yeah, and now we have to see if they choose him back. I’m not counting my chickens, Lydia. This gauntlet has been passed too many times for me to count on anything.”

“I’ll let you know.”

And then she hangs up, and Stiles sticks his phone back in his pocket, leaning his head back against Derek’s shoulder and groaning. “I hate dealing with Scott’s love life.”

\--

His phone is ringing.

Stiles is tied to the bed, it’s seven in the morning, and his phone is ringing.

Fuck his life.

Derek picks his head up next to him, blinking, and then says, “That’s not Laura.”

Thank you, Captain Obvious. And Stiles _really_ doesn’t want to pick up his phone, which is kind of becoming a trend, but the only reason someone would be calling in at seven in the morning is if they really needed to talk to him, and so he needs to answer his phone, which is going to be really difficult, because he’s tied to the bed. “No, it’s my phone. I need one of my hands free.”

A quick movement gets one of the ropes loose enough for him to slip a hand free, and then Derek leans all the way over him to grab his phone and hand it to him, which is awesome, because he would not be able to get that far over. “Hello?”

“I need to talk to you.” Allison.

Derek loosens his other hand, then slips out of bed, which Stiles honestly can’t blame him for, because it must not be the best wakeup call for him to have, either. “I figured that. What’s going on?”

“We’re fucked.”

Fantastic. Stiles sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes with his free hand because God, he’s tired. “I’m going to need you to be a little bit more specific than that.”

She lets out a sharp exhalation. “So my dad just got back to me; he heard from one of his contacts. Gerard’s dead.”

Well that woke him up. “What the fuck? Who’s calling the shots? Is it that Calaveres lady or whoever the matriarch was when we were getting you out? And how did we not know about this?”

“They’ve been keeping it quiet. And no, Araya Calavera’s been out of the picture for a couple of years.”

She sounds off; there’s something she’s not telling him. “What aren’t you saying?”

Allison is silent for a long moment, so long that he actually checks his phone to make sure the call hasn’t been dropped, and right when he’s about to prompt her, she sighs. “It’s Kate. My dad’s contact doesn’t know how, but apparently Kate’s been running the HFU from prison for at least a couple of months. She had some loyal people on the inside, and I guess they took Gerard out. Do you know what this means?”

It means he’s right; Argent wasn’t working alone. “Allison—”

“It means our immunity is gone. All of it. She doesn’t know about the deal, and even if she did, she wouldn’t care. I’m a traitor, and a glow-whore with that. They’re going to go after me, and after us, hard.”

Oh, Christ. “Does Scott know? And speaking of Scott, once we’re done with all of this shit, I want to know what the hell you and Isaac are going to do about what happened.”

“I’m not dealing with that right now.” She sounds distracted, suddenly, and he can hear something in the background, faint voices, like someone is talking in the room with, or like the television is on. “I called you first because they’ve been targeting here; I’ll call him in a—oh my God.”

He hasn’t heard her that scared in a long time. “What happened?”

“Someone just shot Laura Hale on live TV.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a couple of things.
> 
> One, this is the end of this part, but not the end of the series. Don't kill me.
> 
> Two, in regards to Stiles's opinion on greater levels of submission, that's not what I'm saying subbing is like, if that makes sense. It's just what Stiles is afraid of.
> 
> Three, I will hopefully have Cole's POV of the interview up relatively soon, though school and work are starting in a couple days, so we'll have to see.


End file.
